


Hanging On By A Thread

by DarthLuffy



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: Basic warnings for blood and violence cause Hope is a Mikaelson, Cause it's high school and that's how dating works, F/F, F/M, Family, Gen, Missing Scenes, The pairings change over time, Violence, day to day life, not a romantic fic, tries harder to follow canon than the actual show, will add more character tags as more characters show up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23948581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthLuffy/pseuds/DarthLuffy
Summary: A little over two years passed between the end of the Originals and the start of Legacies. There were poorly handled crushes, trips to find supernaturals, creation of magical artifacts, and a young tribrid just trying to cope with everything that had happened.
Relationships: Hope Mikaelson/Josie Saltzman
Comments: 73
Kudos: 161





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** So this is collection of scenes and stories set in between the end of the Originals and the start of Legacies. I'm saying this starts in March or so after Klaus dies, Hope's 14(birthday is in June), the Twins are 13(I'm saying their birthday is in November since the date on the wiki and time it's shown in Legacies don't mesh). First chapter is setting up the start of Alaric and Hope's relationship and establishing how things are with between her and the twins. I'm going to try and stay as accurate to canon as possible which is a fun challenge as I'm not sure the show itself really tries that hard. Anyways, read, enjoy, and leave a comment.

**Hanging On By A Thread**

"Are you certain about this?" Marcel finally asked, addressing the elephant in the room. "You know there's no need for you to return if you're not ready."

"I'll be fine." Hope answered, rolling her eyes at Marcel's question. She was almost impressed that it had taken him this long to ask, they were almost to Mystic Falls.

"I know you'll be fine, that's not what I'm asking." Marcel replied, keeping half his attention on the road as they flew down the highway, maneuvering around cars with an ease only a vampire could have. "I want to know if you are ready to return to school. It's not going to be the same as it was before."

"How bad could it be? So, they know I'm a Mikaelson now. Whatever." Hope said dismissively, putting her earbuds back in as a way to end the conversation. It would be fine. So everyone at school now knew she was the daughter of Klaus Mikaelson, and a one of a kind tribrid. It wasn't like she had been popular to begin with.

"Come on Hope, you're smarter than that." Marcel said, glancing over at Hope with a slight smile only to narrow his eyes as he saw her earbuds were back in. "And I know you can still hear me."

Hope's only response to that was to turn the music up even louder, to the point that Marcel was certain he'd be able to hear it clearly even if he hadn't possessed supernatural hearing. Shaking his head he reached over and snatched Hope's phone from her, faster than she could react to, and paused the music.

"Seriously?!" Hope half shouted, glaring at Marcel.

"Yes, seriously." Marcel answered, idly scrolling through Hope's playlist as he did. He liked to think that he stayed up to date with current music better than most vampires his age but even he didn't recognize most of the tracks. Going from what he'd heard during the car ride it wasn't exactly the most uplifting playlist Hope could've picked.

"You're unique, and that alone would be enough to cause problems. Add in that you're Klaus' daughter and it becomes inevitable. I just want to make sure you're ready for that." The Mikaelson's had been around for a thousand years and had spent the vast majority of it making enemies. There were bound to be students that held a grudge against them, it was why Hope had been made to hide her identity in the first place.

"It's high school… How bad can it be?" Technically it was still middle school, but it'd be high school next year, and half of her classes were with older students anyways. Besides it was a boarding school, and one with a rather small student body.

"Uh huh, I've seen enough bad teen dramas to know not to underestimate how vicious teenagers can be." Marcel replied, smiling as he saw Hope's mouth open in shock.

"When were you watching teen dramas? I don't even watch those and I am a teen." Hope asked, face scrunching up in disbelief. She just couldn't see Marcel sitting down to watch some dumb show on the CW on a Thursday night, he had to have better things to do.

"Back when I first met Davina, she couldn't really go out and there wasn't much to do besides either read or watch TV. Some of them were actually pretty entertaining." Marcel explained, a fond look in his eye as he remembered the nights. There had been a lot of things he'd gotten wrong back then but the time he had been able to spend with Davina was something he'd always treasure.

"I don't think I'll ever see you in the same light again." Hope said, a smile on her face as she started to laugh. The image of the always suave, badass Marcel watching stupid shows with Davina back when she was her age was just too funny for her.

"Oh, so that's how it is?" Marcel said, a genuine smile on his face as he saw Hope lighten up again. "Knowing I enjoyed watching a few teen dramas ruined my image? Well then I definitely shouldn't tell you that your Aunt obsesses over reality TV shows."

Hope' eyes widened at that, "Wait? Which one?" It had to be Rebekah, right? She couldn't see Freya ever watching something like that.

"Rebekah of course, Freya prefers old cartoons from what I've heard." Marcel said, wishing that he was kidding. He had considered tracking down and compelling whoever necessary to get the Bachelor taken off the air more than once. But the thought of it just being replaced with something even worse had stopped him from doing so thus far.

"I knew it." Hope said gleefully, laughing as Marcel confirmed what she had thought. Oh, she was going to have fun holding this over her Aunt's head later.

"Hey now, don't go getting me in trouble." Marcel said, suddenly seeing a flaw in pointing out Rebekah's guilty pleasure.

"No promises," Hope said with a mischievous smile. "So, what shows did you and Davina watch? Maybe I'll check them out." It wasn't like she wouldn't have plenty of time by herself to watch them. Despite her dismissive responses to Marcel she did have an idea of what to expect once she returned to class, having gotten a taste of it for a few weeks already. She just didn't want her family to worry. Besides it was just school, how bad could it be?"

* * *

So, it turns out that school could in fact be pretty bad. The first day hadn't been, everyone seeming to be scared to even be in the same room with her. By the second day that had passed though and the pointing and whispers behind her back had begun. And now here she was on just her third day back at school, with a dozen werewolves on the ground around her in varying states of unconsciousness.

"I told you to leave me alone," Hope said, practically growling the words out. Suspended in the air in front of her was the alpha of the werewolves at the Salvatore school, a normally imposing seventeen-year-old wolf that was over a foot taller than Hope, with the bulging muscles and crew cut to match. A little less imposing when being magically held in the air by a fourteen-year-old girl though.

"Hope! What is going on here?!" Alaric shouted as he ran into the gym, one of his daughters trailing behind him, having alerted him to a potential situation just a few minutes ago. "Put Javier down."

"Fine," Hope replied, giving a dark smile and a slight tilt of her head before throwing Javier into the gym wall.

Alaric raised both hands in protest at that before clinching them into fists and lowering them. Honestly, he should have expected as much. He was still disappointed though. "What is going on here?" He finally asked, praying that there was a justification for Hope having put all of the school's werewolves in the infirmary.

"This brain-dead brute of wolf decided that I needed to submit to him because I activated my werewolf curse." Hope explained, gesturing to where the hopefully not actually brain-dead wolf was slumped against a wall. "I told him to go hell of course. That was when he had the pack jump me. Didn't go well for them."

Alaric brought his hands up to rub his temples, trying to prevent the inevitable headache this would cause. When Josie had told him that she'd seen the wolves closing the doors to the gym and surrounding Hope he had assumed that this was what was happening. He hadn't expected Hope to have thrashed them so thoroughly though. About half of the wolves looked to have been put to sleep while the other half were either unconscious, nursing broken limbs, or some combination of the two.

"She's a wolf." Javier said, slowly raising to his feet. "She belongs in the pack."

"I'm impressed you're still conscious." His skull must have been even thicker than she had thought. Flexing her fingers, she raised a fist, "Allow me to fix that."

"Hope." Alaric said, getting Hope to reluctantly lower her fist. Knocking Javier out wasn't going to help resolves this.

"Shouldn't she be the alpha now? That's how it works, right?" Josie asked, speaking up for the first time. She had been concerned for Hope's life when she saw wolves ganging up on her, it had never occurred to her that she would win.

The other three people's eyes widened at that, processing her comment. "Why thank you Josie. That does sound right." Hope said, giving the younger girl a smile that got her to look down at the ground shyly.

"Bullshit." Javier countered, "There's no one in the pack who'll accept you after using magic." Alpha was a title that was earned through strength, using spells was a violation of that. Or at least he assumed, it wasn't like there were rules for how to deal with a wolf/witch/vampire tribrid.

"What if she wins without magic then?" Alaric asked, a plan forming in his head. If there was a way to keep this from escalating even more then he was willing to take it.

"Then she would be the alpha," Javier reluctantly confirmed. Not that there was any way she could take him in fair fight though. He had been a wolf since age 10 and had nearly a hundred pounds of muscle on her. The very idea of Hope winning was a joke.

"I don't want to be the alpha. I just want to be left alone." Hope said, wondering why they were even discussing this. If anything, her becoming the alpha would just cause more problems for her.

"Alright, let's make that the condition then." Alaric said, both teens looking over to him wondering what he was suggesting. "I will allow the two of you to fight again, a week from now, with no magic involved. If Hope loses, she'll join the pack, if she wins then you and your wolves will leave her alone."

"What? Why wou-"

"Agreed." Javier answered, cutting across Hope's complaints. "What's wrong? Scared to fight fair?"

Hope glared over at the suddenly cocky wolf, fingers itching to throw him into the wall again. "She'll do it." Alaric said, answering for her suddenly. "Won't you Hope?"

Hope hesitated still, wondering why the Dr. Saltzman was pushing for this. He had to know that she couldn't beat Javier without magic. Even Josie was looking between her and Javier, seemingly sizing the two of them up and wondering how her Dad expected Hope to fight him. But she didn't know what else she was supposed to do. If she refused the fight then the wolves would just try again sometime, and next time it might not be somewhere she could see them coming and be ready.

"Fine, I'll do it." Hope answered, reluctantly agreeing to the fight. She hoped Dr. Saltzman had a plan, because otherwise she was going to get her ass kicked.

"Good. Then all we need to do is take care of this mess. Javier, you can stay. Hope, go to my office and wait there. We'll discuss your punishment for this later." Alaric said, relieved that both parties had agreed to his proposal. Step one complete.

"Why am I being punished? I was the one attacked, I just defended myself." Hope argued, not happy with Alaric's decision.

"Let's go with excessive use of force. Now go" Alaric said firmly, wanting Hope to leave. The sooner she was out of her the less chance there was of things escalating any more. "Josie, please make sure she goes straight to my office, and then go fetch the nurse… and no telling anyone what happened here. Especially not your sister."

Watching as the two girls left the room, one of them still clearly not happy with him, Alaric let out a sigh as he turned to survey the damage Hope had done. From what he could tell there were at least three broken arms, one broken leg, and several likely concussions. And he couldn't help but feel that they'd gotten off lucky given what the girl could've done to them. Now he needed to do his part and focus on step two of his plan. Making sure Hope won the fight so that an angry Mikaelson didn't show up on his doorstep wondering why their niece had been forced into a werewolf pack.

* * *

"Tell me you have a plan. You have a plan, right?" Hope asked, having been counting on Alaric having one when she'd agreed to the fight.

"I have a plan." Alaric confirmed, getting Hope to sigh in relief. "I'll train you how to fight over the next week so that you can defeat Javier without needing magic."

"What? No. That's not a plan. That's the plot to a crappy movie." Hope replied, feeling her confidence that Dr. Saltzman had a way out of this rapidly deteriorating. Javier was taller, older, had been a wolf longer, and had easily over a hundred pounds more muscle than her. Unlike vamps, wolves' strength came from their actual physical makeup which meant that he would be far stronger than her, even more than if they'd been human.

"Relax. We'll start this afternoon. It'll be your 'detention' for the next week. I guarantee that you'll think different after seeing what I can teach you." Alaric said confidently, seeking to reassure the girl. Honestly Hope was underestimating herself, her physical abilities had been nearly equal to the average werewolf even before activating her curse. He wasn't too sure what the full extent of her abilities was, but it wouldn't surprise him if they far outpaced even a wolf like Javier.

Slumping down in her seat Hope rested her head on one hand, "Why couldn't they just leave me alone? They never cared before." She had been going to the school for years while pretending to be just a werewolf, albeit one who had yet to awaken her curse, and never had any problems with the pack. Had awakening her curse changed that much? Or was it because they knew she was a Mikaelson now?

"Before we were able to use the excuse of you not having activated your curse to keep you separate from the pack." Alaric explained, confirming what Hope had already suspected. It had been Hayley's request to keep her daughter out of the pack, one he and Caroline had been willing to accommodate but it had caused issues. The main one being that it had made Hope even more of an outsider, as she had been the only student at the school that appeared to not have access to her supernatural abilities. There were some changes he could make now to try and resolve that though.

"I know we originally said we wouldn't, but I'm going to make some changes to your class schedule." Alaric said suddenly, surprising Hope. "You're a witch as well so you should be taking classes as one."

"I thought you wanted to give the rest of the students time to… what was it? 'Process the changes in how they should view me.'" Hope asked, parroting the words Caroline had used when they had discussed her returning to school.

"That was Caroline's idea." Alaric said, happy to shove blame onto his currently absentee co-parent and headmistress. It had been a worthwhile idea, and one that he wasn't against trying, but also one that he never believed would work. He preferred to let the students see Hope for what she truly was and deal with the consequences from there.

"I'll let the teachers know but for starters you can attend the Intermediate Spellcasting class tomorrow. I know you always wanted too." That had been one of the real cruelties with Hope having to hide her identity for so long, that she had been unable to practice the magic she could use openly. Hayley getting knocked up and having a werewolf daughter who didn't know her father and hadn't activated her curse had been easy to explain. Hayley having a witch daughter and not knowing who the father was would've been next to impossible.

"I guess something good came out this at least." Hope said, a half smile on her face. She was willing to bet that she already knew everything they'd teach in the class, but it'd be nice to be around more witches… oh shit. "Wait, does that mean I'll have another class with your evil twins?"

"They're not evil." Alaric said, exasperation heavy in his voice. He wasn't sure if his and Klaus' hatred of each other had somehow been passed down genetically or what, but it seemed that their kids just could not get along. "Josie was the one that came and warned me today, she did that because she was worried about you. And she was the one who suggested that you could be alpha."

"Which is just going to lead to me getting my ass kicked." Hope protested, still not thinking that she had much of chance.

"It'll be fine." Alaric said, trying to reassure her once more. Hope didn't seem to be willing to believe him though. He'd just have to prove it to her then. "Look, meet me at the old mill after classes today. We'll go ahead and start your training this afternoon."

"Alright." Hope agreed, getting up to leave his office. She wasn't sure how it would help but she would try. Pausing as she reached the door she turned back to Dr. Saltzman, "And I will try to get along with your daughters. Even if they are evil."

"They're not evil, Hope!" Alaric shouted after her. At least he hoped they wouldn't be. That was the whole reason Caroline was absent from the school at the moment. Some old manuscripts about witch covens had shown up on the black market in Shanghai and she'd left to retrieve. Any information that could possibly lead to them finding a way to stop the Gemini curse was worth looking in to, even if it meant that she had to be away from the school for more extended periods.

* * *

"Gotta say, I'm surprised you know about this place." Hope said, glancing around the remains of the most recent party that the old mill had played host too.

"I know things about this school and it's grounds that you would never believe." Alaric said, not bothering to conceal how smug he felt. It always amused him that the kids thought they were actually hiding the parties from him. Teenagers needed a chance to blow off steam, he preferred that they do so some place were there was no risk of humans getting involved.

"So how are we going to do this? Are you going to teach me how to make a fist? Or how to throw a proper punch?" Hope asked snidely, holding up her fists in a deliberately sloppy stance to sell her point.

"No," Alaric answered, taking a small silver idol out his pocket and placing it on the stairs. Seeing the curious look Hope was giving him he explained, "This is a sort of warning system. It sets a perimeter around the area and glows red if someone crosses it. And I have no intention wasting time teaching you things you've certainly learned already."

"Worried about someone intruding?" Hope asked, heading tilting slightly in curiosity. She actually wasn't sure if they were keeping these training sessions secret, it couldn't hurt she supposed.

"Well I don't think it'd be great for someone to walk in on me beating up one of my students." Alaric explained as he pulled a small metal bracelet out of his pocket before tossing it to Hope.

"An anti-magic bracelet?" Hope asked, holding up the bracelet to look at closer. It looked remarkably similar to the one she used to wear as a child.

"I'd rather not be thrown through the roof once we start." Alaric explained, getting Hope to shrug before slipping it on. "Besides it'll help you get accustomed to fighting without your magic to back you up. Now, ready to begin?"

"I guess?" Hope answered not to sure what they were beginning yet. Dr. Saltzman had been a bit light on details. Seeing the man instantly lunge for her she realized quickly though, he intended to spar with her, likely to test her abilities. Well fine, she'd show the old man what she could do.

Dodging the first punch with superhuman ease she ducked under the follow up, circling behind Dr. Saltzman and moving to go on the offensive. Before she could even close in on him though he'd pulled away, resetting his stance and launching himself at her in a counter offensive, offsetting her with an aggressive attack.

Still she managed to block the first punch, using her superior strength to push him off and lash out with a punch of her own. That was when everything went wrong. Dodging to the inside of her punch Alaric grabbed her arm and pulled her off balance, before using his opposite arm to drive a vicious elbow directly into Hope's nose.

"Fuc-" Hope started to yell, hands instinctively reaching for her nose until a knee to the gut doubled her over. A follow up double-fisted blow to her back drove her to the floor, leaving her laying there as she fought to catch her breath.

"Is that all?" Dr. Saltzman asked, stepping back from the fallen teen to give her a minute to catch her breath.

"Oww, fuck…" Hope groaned, coughing out mouthful of the blood she'd swallowed as she tried to get back on her feet. Glaring over at Dr. Saltzman she snapped at him, "What the fuck was that?"

"That was you getting your ass kicked by a human with less than half your strength." Alaric said, Hope continuing to glare at him. She wasn't a bad fighter, having been trained by her mom to be able to defend herself. But Hope lacked experience and she didn't have the natural killer instinct to make up for it against someone as skilled as he was. And she had certainly not expected him to attack without pulling his punches.

"Get up. I know how fast you heal. Let's try this again." Alaric said, goading her to rise. There wasn't anything in the world that could heal as quickly as Hope, to the extent that it was less accelerated healing and closer to type of regeneration you'd see in superhero movies. It was the whole reason he was willing to be this rough, she could take it and heal from it, no one else could.

"When I break your nose, I won't be helping you fix it." Hope threatened, wincing as she felt her own broken nose being pushed back into its proper place. Super healing or not it still hurt like hell. Now pissed off she launched herself at Dr. Saltzman, no longer holding back for fear of hurting him. At worst she could just use her blood to heal him if she broke something important.

Try as she might though she was unable to land a hit on the man, Dr. Saltzman moving around her wild attacks with a grace she hadn't known he possessed. He either avoided her attack outright or redirected them just enough to slip by. And anytime she left even the slightest opening he drove an attack home. A split lip, three black eyes, another busted nose, even a pair of broken fingers after he'd ducked a punch and left her to sink her fist four inches into of the wooden beams of the old mill. Every time she just shrugged off the injuries, knowing they'd heal near instantly and instead using the pain to sharpen her focus.

He was starting to tire; she could tell that much. She wasn't sure how long they'd been fighting but it had to have been for a while. And while she could shrug off his blows all she needed to do was hit him once. Gathering herself she pressed the attack again, trying to drive Dr. Saltzman into one of the corners of the room so he couldn't escape. To her surprise though he suddenly charged her, throwing her off balance for a second as she wondered what he was planning.

Taking advantage of Hope's hesitation Alaric, drove a powerful kick to the teen's stomach, wincing as he felt bones crack. It wasn't as if he was enjoying hurting the girl like this, far from it. But the only way she could fight against a wolf like Javier was if she had the combat experience to match. And that couldn't be granted by pulling his punches. For today though she had probably enough. "Ok, that's enough."

Reaching into the bag he'd brought he took out a couple of bottles of water, offering one to Hope who begrudgingly accepted it as she pulled herself off the floor. "So, what did you learn?"

"That I hate you?" Hope answered, glaring at the man as she felt her bruised ribs. She could almost feel them knitting themselves back together, a process that did nothing to lessen the pain from them.

"Come on Hope. I'm human, not as fast, not as strong, and definitely not able to heal like you. And yet I kicked your ass all over this room." Alaric said, unable to help the slightly smug smile for appearing on his face. It was nice to know he still had it; he hadn't had a reason to fight like this in years.

"Yeah but you've been doing this since before I was born. And I mean that literally." Hope pointed out. It wasn't like she missed the point he was making though; she just didn't feel like giving him the satisfaction of acknowledging it.

"That I have. And I'm willing to teach you everything I learned in that time. It just won't be easy." Alaric asked, getting Hope to look over at him from where she was still slumped on the floor. "Now what did you learn?"

Sighing Hope closed her eyes for a moment, reviewing the fight in as neutral a manner as she could. "That superior strength doesn't matter if you don't connect. That if you hit the right spot it doesn't matter if you're weaker. That you are a merciless bastard."

"All good observations." Alaric said, smirking at Hope's observation of himself. It was pretty spot on. "Supernaturals especially tend to be overconfident when they believe they have the advantage, that can be used against them. Javier has been challenged by every wolf to have come through this school over the last three years. He's good, but against you he'll think he has an insurmountable advantage and that can be used against him. It also helps that he's wrong."

Nodding along Hope paused and tilted her head at that, "Wait, what do you mean he's wrong?"

"Hope, your physical abilities were on par with the average werewolf before you activated your curse. Javier may still be stronger than you, but it won't be by much. And there is no one that can heal like you." Alaric explained, pointing out the very simple observation Hope had somehow missed. As she had always had to hide her abilities at school the only benchmark she had to measure herself against had been her family and the members of the Crescent Wolf pack, a pack that had been gifted many of Hayley's own advantages.

"I actually have a chance." Hope said, realizing it for the first time. If she could fight like Alaric, then with her own abilities she could actually win. She wouldn't be forced into joining the stupid school pack and could get them to just leave her alone. "Alright. Let's go again. Don't hold back on me."

It would hurt. It would probably hurt a lot. But she'd learn faster this way and she'd heal from it anyways. She would learn everything Dr. Saltzman had to teach her, and if that failed then she'd simply outlast Javier when they fought. She'd heal during the fight, he wouldn't. It wouldn't be the best way to win but after everything she'd caused she probably deserved the pain anyways.

"Good dodge, Hope. Now to counter, you can either take advantage of your opponent overextending their arm and attack there or slip past and target their leg or back." Alaric said, holding his position as he advised Hope on her options.

* * *

It was the last day before Hope and Javier were to fight, and they were going through a slower walk-through, making an actual plan for the fight based on what Alaric had seen over the years. Hope had grown even faster than he thought she would. By only the third day she'd been able to keep up with him in their spars, no longer getting pummeled the way she had the first day. And by the fifth she'd finally managed to start landing hits on him, culminating in a broken rib of his own that she had been kind enough to use her blood to heal.

"I take it I shouldn't actually break Javier's arm?" Hope asked, realizing that she wasn't sure how much regulation this fight was going to have.

"Probably a good idea. You should go for the submission first, get him to realize he can't win and end the fight. But if that isn't viable then knock him out. Breaking something should be your last resort." Javier was a werewolf and thus would heal, but a broken bone would take at least a day to do so. And he wanted this fight done and over with if possible, having the pack leader nursing a broken bone wouldn't help that.

"I actually think I can do this now." Hope said, smiling as she admitted it. She had thought that Dr. Saltzman was insane for suggesting this originally but now she was almost looking forward to it. She could win, she was sure of that now.

"Should that be flickering?" Hope asked suddenly, pointing to the silver idol Alaric had set up each day to alert them of anyone nearby. It was alternating between glowing red and its normal dull silver, at seemingly random intervals.

"I'm not sure…" Alaric admitted, the idol glowing red and staying that way for several seconds before fading again. It was supposed to glow red whenever anyone entered its perimeter, so he supposed it was possible that someone was walking along the edge of the perimeter, occasionally crossing over and activating it.

The two of them were so engrossed in wondering what the idol was doing that they failed to notice that someone had approached the old mill until a voice called out, "And what are you two doing out here?"

Recognizing the voice Hope's face fell, dread setting in as she turned to face her. "Oh look, it's the evil queen returning to her lair."

"Hmph, well you are right that I am your better in every way." Lizzie said smugly, smiling even more as Hope glared at her. "What? Inserting yourself into my Spellcasting class wasn't enough for you, so now you're trying to take my Dad too?"

"Were you always this delusional?" Hope retorted, rolling her eyes as she spat back at Lizzie.

"Why you-"

"Girls!" Alaric shouted, cutting off their bickering. "You known each for the majority of your lives… can't you just try to get along?"

"She doesn't want too!" Both girls shouted in protest, eyes widening as they realized they had each said the same thing. For a moment the two girls just stared at each other, Alaric holding his breath in between them, praying they would realize that they just misunderstood each other.

It wasn't to be though as Lizzie straightened up and glared at Hope once more, "Whatever. I don't care what you two are doing. I just came out here to see how trashed it was." That wasn't actually why she was here, she had just been out for a walk. But she had been able to feel the magic in the air and had followed it to it's source by siphoning it and seeing which way it was renewed from.

"What does it matter? This place was already a dump." Hope was honestly disturbed by how the scent of alcohol seemed to linger in this place, although she couldn't remember noticing it as much before activating her curse.

"It's where me and my friends are going to practice for the talent show." Lizzie answered, having just decided that, before giving Hope a sarcastic smile. "You know, friends? Those things you have none of?"

Hope's mouth opened in an empty desire to contradict what Lizzie was saying but she couldn't. There were very few people she could say were her friends and almost all of them were part of her family. And none of them were at this school. Still it wasn't like she had to just stay here and take this. "I'm done here."

"Hope, you don't have to leave." Alaric argued futilely, Hope grabbing her bag and storming off past him. Sighing he rubbed his temples, turning to face his all to cheerful daughter.

"Why do you two always have to fight?" He asked, shaking his head at his daughter. For the life of him he couldn't figure it out, the two of them seemed to always be at odds over something.

"It's not like she makes it easy to get along with her." Lizzie countered, not seeing why he was defending Hope. Everyone knew that it was her fault that Henry was dead and Roman had disappeared.

"She just lost both her parents and her uncle. Can't you cut her a little slack?" Alaric pleaded.

"Why?" Lizzie asked, condescension heavy in her voice. "It's her fault they died anyways."

Even as she said it Lizzie seemed to realize that it was the wrong thing to say, her hands jumping to her mouth, trying to take the words back as her dad stared at her in shock. From outside she suddenly heard a loud gasp, before the clear sound of someone running off could be heard. Rushing to the doorway she looked out and was just able to see Hope running off, the girl having evidently heard what she'd said. Whether she's stayed to listen in on them or had been coming back for some reason she wasn't sure, but she had heard what Lizzie had said. "I–I didn't mean…"

"You're grounded. Until I say otherwise." Alaric said, the disappointment he felt clear in his voice. So much for hoping Lizzie and Hope would be friends anytime soon.

Lizzie didn't even protest, just nodding as her dad told her. She didn't know why she had said what she did, she wasn't that cruel of a person. _'Because it's true,'_ a voice answered in her head, Lizzie shaking her head to try and block it out. It didn't matter if it was true or not, that wasn't the kind of thing you should say. She was a better person than that… right?

* * *

The next day the fight that had been scheduled a week ago was finally about to take place. The school gym had been closed up, with only the wolves, Hope, Dr. Saltzman and his daughters being allowed in. Alaric had intended for it to be only Hope, the werewolves, and himself but Josie had insisted on coming as this had resulted from her idea and Lizzie had tagged along with her and he hadn't felt like forcing her not to.

The werewolf pack were all seated on one side of the gym, buzzing with a palpable anticipation for the upcoming fight while his daughters were on the opposite side of the gym at his behest. If for some reason something happened with the wolves, he didn't want them getting caught in the crossfire.

"Are you two ready?" Alaric asked the two combatants, Hope and Javier standing at the center of the gym glaring at each other. Seeing the two of them matched up like this made their physical differences even more exaggerated. Javier towered over Hope, even more than most people did, and would appear as if he could crush her with ease. As he was about to learn though that wasn't as simple a task as he believed.

"I've been waiting for this all week." Javier said with a smirk, cracking his knuckles threateningly before settling into a ready stance. As a surprise to Hope he had opted to go barefoot, apparently being his preference when accepting challengers.

"Let's just get this over with," Hope said, taking a second to pull her hair back into a ponytail so it'd be out of her face before nodding at Alaric that she was ready. Glancing over at where the twins were, she felt her gaze harden as she saw Lizzie. Letting the anger she'd felt the day before return, she focused it on Javier instead, readying herself for the fight.

"Remember, if I tell you to stop the fight then the fight stops." Alaric warned, waiting until he got a nod of agreement from both combatants. Taking in a heavy breath he nodded to himself, "Ok then… Begin!"

The instant Dr. Saltzman moved back out of the way Hope launched herself at Javier, taking the senior wolf by surprise as he hadn't expected her to attack first. As she closed in Javier threw a heavy punch at her, intending to intercept her as she approached. Sliding around it Hope made to grab Javier's arm, intending to use it as a point to attack from. To her surprise though he didn't allow her to, instead stepping in closer to her and swinging his arm out to the side in an elbow strike that made her stumble as she moved to avoid it.

Capitalizing on the stumble Javier planted one leg and swung out with the other, aiming a kick for Hope's head. The younger girl wasn't a fool though and ducked under the kick, only to be left open to the follow up kick as Javier spun in mid-air, planting his kicking leg into the ground and lashing out in a roundhouse kick with the other that caught Hope in the chest and drove her back a few steps.

Feeding off the cheers from his pack Javier didn't stop his assault, launching himself after Hope as she fell back. Opting for a flying knee, Javier forced her to use both arms to block, leaving her open to a heavy elbow strike that drew blood as it split open the skin above her left eye.

That seemed to wake something up in Hope, the girl lashing out with an uppercut that caught Javier a glancing blow on the jaw and got him to reflexively lash out with a kick. It wasn't as fast as it should have been though and Hope was able to latch onto his foot before he could pull it back. Grinning the tribrid twisted his ankle uncomfortably before exerting her supernatural strength to lift and throw him across the gym.

"He was teaching her how to fight…" Lizzie realized while the wolves laughed at seeing their alpha thrown by a fourteen-year-old girl. Both combatants were taking a moment to catch their breath, reassessing their evaluations of their opponents based on the fight so far.

"Who's he?" Josie asked her twin, wondering what Lizzie was talking about while keeping her attention on the fight. Or more accurately on Hope as the teen tribrid wiped the blood off her forehead and got ready to fight again.

"Dad. He's been teaching Hope how to fight." Lizzie whisper-shouted to her sister, having just put the pieces together herself. That was why they had been out at old mill together, he had been preparing her for this fight.

"So that was his plan…" Josie replied softly, getting Lizzie to look at her in confusion, clearly wanting her to explain further. Seeing Hope and Javier circling each and about to start again Josie shook her head, "later," she promised.

"Not bad," Javier admitted as he closed in on Hope. He hadn't had his bell rung like that in over a year, and no one had ever managed to throw him.

"Too bad I can't say the same for you. Tell me do the wolves pick their alpha on how well they fly now?" Hope taunted, smirking as she heard some of the werewolves cracking up with laughter. If she could goad him into making a mistake then all the better for her, and if not then at least she could take joy in popping his ego a bit.

Letting out a grunt of anger Javier stepped in close and swung at her, using his superior reach to pressure Hope. Having experienced her strength, he was wary about letting her get into a range where she could actually counter.

Dodging or diverting her opponents blows Hope looked for an opening, struggling to find one. She had to admit Javier was an even better fighter than she had thought. She had assumed he simply relied on his strength, but he actually knew what he was doing and wasn't letting her goad him into making sloppy mistakes. Fortunately, she had other advantages she could still rely on.

Steeling herself she took aim at the next punch Javier threw, meeting it with one of her own. In a barehanded fight such a move was the epitome of foolishness, as it was likely to result in breaking both combatants' hands. But when one the combatants could heal near instantly it became less foolish.

"Fuck!" Javier yelled as he felt this fingers break, wincing at he sudden pain. So shocked by the unorthodox move was he, that he didn't realize that Hope had closed in until she was driving her other fist into his gut.

That snapped his attention back to the fight, even as he struggled to catch his breath. Ripping his head back he narrowly avoided Hope connecting with a kick to his chin that almost certainly would've knocked him out. Countering with another roundhouse kick he opened up more distance between himself and Hope, wanting to give himself time to catch his breath. Seeing Hope raise the hand that had been broken along with his and flex her fingers, showing off that she had already healed, made him change his mind though. If this battle turned into one of attrition, he had no chance.

"She's kind of badass." Josie said softly as she watched the fight, biting down on the edge of her lip. She hadn't known Hope could do anything like this, it was if she was seeing her in an entirely new light.

"Whatever. It's just cause Dad helped her," Lizzie protested half-heartedly as Javier launched a wild flurry of attacks at Hope, forcing her to stay moving just to keep from being clobbered. Hope was taking on a werewolf three years older than her and twice her size and winning. That was a little cool, even if she'd never admit it.

Out on the gym floor Hope was starting to get annoyed at always having to dodge. Javier had apparently realized that he had to end this quickly and gone all in on attacks. The blows were coming with enough speed and ferocity that she couldn't do anything but try and stay out of reach. That only worked for so long though and eventually Javier managed to catch the side of her knee with a kick, sending her tumbling down to all fours as it broke.

"Got you," Javier growled driving a vicious kick to Hope's ribs. The teen didn't give up though, grabbing on to his foot and twisting to pull him down to the floor with her.

Using Javier's foot as a point of reference Hope twisted herself around, lining up for a vicious kick with her heel aimed right between Javier's legs. The howl the werewolf alpha let out at that was music to her ears, as were the sympathetic groans she heard from the male members of the pack. Getting back on her feet she took in the pitiable sight Javier made, maybe now he'd submit and give up this stupid fight.

"You bitch, I'll kill you!" Javier groaned as pushed himself up on all fours, cursing Hope for her low blow.

Fine. If he wanted to take this all the way, then she'd oblige him. Walking over to the slumped over werewolf alpha she drove an ax kick into his back that knocked him back down into the floor and caused him to shout out in pain. Another kick to the back of his head followed as he tried to rise up again, shattering his nose and covering his face with blood.

Having had enough of the fight Hope pressed her boot into the back of Javier's head, forcing his face into the blood covered floorboards of the gym. "Give up. You can't beat me."

"Fuck you, over my dead body." Javier protested, full of bravado. He wouldn't appear weak in front of his pack.

"That can be arranged. Just a little more pressure and I bet your head will pop like a grape." Hope threatened, pressing down on him with her foot while Dr. Saltzman stepped closer toward them now that the fight had reached its conclusion.

"Hope…" Alaric started, wanting to resolve everything now that the winner was obvious.

"Fuck you," Javier shouted, cutting Dr. Saltzman off. "You wouldn't do it."

"Really?" Hope said, giving a hollow laugh. "Did you miss the memo? I'm a Mikaelson. We're infamous for doing exactly this." The moment she said it she could feel the atmosphere in the room shift, as if they realized for the first time who she was. The bravado she could feel from Javier just moments before was gone and replaced with something else, something she could actually smell. Fear. And it wasn't just him, but the other wolves too. They were all afraid of her.

"We're done here." Hope said, removing her foot from Javier. Turning her back on him she addressed the gathered wolves instead. "Stay away from me or end up like him. Your choice."

Not hearing any dissent, she turned and left the gym, ignoring Alaric as he tried to stop her. This hadn't been how he had wanted it to end. He was hoping that if she proved her strength then Hope could earn their respect, the same way Hayley had with the wolves in New Orleans. This was different though; they were all afraid of her now. They would leave her alone, just as she wanted, but it was going to be a complete type of isolation even more extreme than what she'd experienced before. That was the cost of creating fear instead of respect.

* * *

**Author's Note:** And that is chapter 1. Like I said, mostly setting up how Alaric and Hope start bonding and how her and the twins interacted. Josie and Lizzie have much larger parts in the upcoming chapters. Other characters will be added as the story progresses. Penelope joins after a few chapters, same for a few of other side characters, MG and Kaleb won't show up until closer to when Legacies would start due to being 16-17 when they were turned. As this is set before Legacies Landon and Raphael won't be showing up, Landon will get mentioned a few times though. Also since I don't have to deal with agents and casting headaches Hope's family will actually be around occasionally. Hopefully this chapter will be the only one I need to put the longer Author's Notes on but I wanted to go ahead and answer some question I knew people would have. And again if you enjoyed it, leave a comment I like reading those.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Chapter two, featuring 75% more twins. This was fun to write so read, enjoy, leave a comment. The usual stuff. 

**Hanging On By A Thread**

"Two weeks! I was gone for only two weeks and you're hosting fights between students?" Caroline yelled, continuing an argument that had been going since she'd walked back into the school some fifteen minutes ago.

"You weren't here!" Alaric finally yelled back, having grown tired of trying to pacify his co-parent already. "I was. Javier was determined to make Hope submit. It was either help her beat him or let them continue trying to force her to join the pack."

"Couldn't you have waited until I was back?" Caroline asked, a tired look on her face.

"You know I couldn't. Neither of us knew how long you would be gone. And if they had pushed Hope too far then she might have killed them." Alaric pointed out, giving his reason for having done things the way he had. He had hoped that Caroline would return before the fight and they could find another way, but she hadn't so he'd gone ahead with his original plan.

"Hope isn't Klaus, Rick." Caroline countered as she rolled her eyes. He had better not be letting his hatred of Klaus color his opinion of the man's daughter. "She wouldn't kill anyone."

"We both know that's not entirely true." Alaric pointed out, prompting Caroline's eyes to narrow at him. They had both been informed by Freya of the events that had happened in New Orleans, Hope's aunt feeling that they needed to know so that they could help her when needed.

Possessed by dark magic, goaded by her murderous father, a damn good reason to take revenge… none of those changed the fact that Hope, at only fourteen years old, had massacred dozens of vampires. If she had been pushed too far, lost control for just a second, then the consequences could be lethal.

"Hope isn't like that. She's kind and smart and all to willing to atone for her family's legacy." Caroline countered softly, having discussed as much with Hayley over the years. They were far from friends but having kids had changed them both. They had been able to bond somewhat over their daughters and their complicated history with Klaus.

"I know." Alaric replied, surprising Caroline by agreeing with her. "But she's also a teenager. A hormonal, grieving teenager who just lost her family and has a nasty temper. I would be worried about that combination with a human teen, much less one with Hope's abilities." For an ordinary witch it would be a concern but not as great of one as they wouldn't be able to kill so easily, they were more likely to lash out with a fireball or throw someone across the room. With Hope she could kill by just losing control, letting loose with enough raw magic to liquefy someone's brain.

"So what a-" Caroline started to say, before being cutoff by a shrill yell.

"Mommy!" An excited Lizzie screeched, running into the office and launching herself at her mom. Catching her daughter with practiced ease, the vampire gave Alaric a look as if to say they'd finish this later even as she hugged Lizzie to her.

"Did you miss me? Did you bring me a souvenir? Why's Josie hiding behind the door? Are we getting a new student?" Lizzie asked, rapid firing questions so fast they could barely understand her.

"No, there wont be any new stu… Did you say Josie was hiding behind the door?" Caroline realized, eyes widening at that. Handing Lizzie off to Alaric, the girl pouting for a moment at being placed in her father's arms before shrugging and throwing both arms around his neck, Caroline vamped over to the door, getting a hiding Josie to jump as she realized she'd been caught.

Sighing Caroline closed her eyes for a moment, willing herself to remain calm. It wasn't as bad as it could've been, she would've just heard them ~~arguing about~~ discussing Hope, which wasn't great but not as bad as it would've been if she'd heard them discussing the Gemini curse.

"Sorry?" Josie said, looking down at her feet as she tried to look apologetic. She had caught a glimpse of her mom returning and had just wanted to see her before Lizzie hogged her for herself. By the time she'd made it to the study though her parents had already been arguing and the temptation to listen in had been too strong.

"For some reason I doubt that… but you will be. You're grounded, for the rest of the week." Caroline said, not happy with her daughter at the moment. Both of her girls knew better than to try and spy on them, they had always made it clear that there were some things that were just off limits to them. Three days having to go directly to her room after class might help remind her of that.

"Ooo, busted," Lizzie taunted, smirking at her twin. It was rare for Josie to be the one getting in trouble. Usually it was either just her or it would be both of them.

"Need I remind you that you're also grounded?" Alaric pointed out, the smug look on the blonde's face falling at that.

"But Daddy! It's been, like, three days already." Lizzie pointed out, feeling that she had served enough of a sentence already. So she had accidentally pointed out that Hope had gotten her family killed, was that really so bad as to confine her to her room for this long?... probably. But she was tired of it and wanted it to be over.

"And it's going to be three more. Look at it this way, the two of you can take this as an opportunity to spend time together." Alaric said, not giving in to his daughter's pout. He had built up a tolerance to it over the years, he had too.

"We already spend all our time together," Josie pointed out. If anything, they spent too much time together, some separation might be good.

"This is a clear abuse of authority. No other students are ever grounded; therefore, this qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment and should be done away with." Lizzie argued, her twin nodding along in agreement. It wasn't fair to ground them, no one else ever got grounded. They were witches for heaven's sake, you weren't supposed to be able to ground a witch.

"We're your parents." Alaric pointed out, deadpan expression as he ignored his daughter's protest. "Which means the normal rules don't apply."

Seeing Alaric look to her for support, Caroline nodded her agreement. "Your Dad's right. If we say you're grounded, then your grounded."

"Mom…" Both twins whined in unison, having hoped their mother would be on their side.

"But that doesn't mean that you have to be miserable. Return to your room and I'll be by in a little bit to show you what I picked up on my trip. I just need to talk with your father first." Caroline said, both girls brightening at that. They hated when she left on these recruitment trips but at least when she came back she always had presents for them. It didn't make it worth it, but it did take some of the sting away.

"Fine, but it better be something good. If it's just fortune cookies, I'll never forgive you." Lizzie said, glaring at her parents in warning before turning and stomping off. Josie followed after her, pausing for a just moment to give her mom a welcome back hug.

"Next time let's shut the door before we start fighting." Caroline pointed out to Alaric once their daughters were out of ear shot, making a show of getting up to shut the door.

"Agreed. Remind me to have Emma spell it so that's its soundproof as well." Not that it would matter if his daughters were determined but it should help keep other students from hearing secrets they'd rather them not know. God knows he had enough of those. "So, did you find anything useful?"

"Many things. Just nothing about the Gemini coven." Caroline replied, a sour look on her face. She had really hoped this trip would turn up something new, and it had provided a wealth of knowledge on the covens of southeast Asia, but nothing on the Gemini. Nothing that would help save their children's lives.

* * *

"As you all should know casting spells on multiple targets at once greatly increases the amount of energy required and the strain it places on your focus." Mrs. Ortfine said, the Intermediate Spellcasting teacher summarizing the assigned reading from the night before. "There are multiple ways around that problem though, does anyone know what they are?"

Silence greeted her question, the majority of the students looking anywhere except at her while a few others weren't paying attention at all. As the silence dragged on Mrs. Ortfine sighed, "Very well, if there are no volunteers… Lizzie, any ideas?"

"Huh?" Lizzie said, jolting up as Josie kicked her to get her attention. Seeing the expectant look their teacher was giving her she realized she must have been called on for a question. "Umm… four?"

Sighing heavily Mrs. Ortfine shook her head, "Please pay attention to the lecture Miss Saltzman. I promise you will have time to draw hearts around young Grayson's name later."

That got an eruption of laughter from the class, Lizzie blushing and covering the pages on her notebook, currently filled with hearts and combinations of her and Grayson's names. Beside her Josie had a hurt look on her face that her twin was doing her best to ignore, choosing instead to glare at their teacher instead for embarrassing her.

"Now does anyone have an answer they'd like to volunteer, or must I continue to pick?" The blonde witch asked, glancing around the room to see if anyone would volunteer. Finally a hand went up, surprising even her as she saw who it was. "Yes, Wade?"

"I could cast the spell over an area instead. I don't know if it would take less energy, but it should take less focus." Wade answered, practically beaming as he saw the teacher nod in agreement with what he said.

"I think you mean we could cast it," Alyssa Chang chimed in, Wade's happiness rapidly disappearing. "You know, since it's magic? That thing you suck at… sorry, one of the many things you suck at."

"Ms. Chang!" Mrs. Ortfine snapped, getting the young witch to sit up as she seemed to suddenly realize she was in the classroom. "That will be detention for you. Come see me after class."

"What's with everyone getting detention for being honest now? So much for free speech." Lizzie said quietly to Josie, having agreed with what Alyssa had said. Bitch or not, she did sometimes make a good point.

"And that will be detention for you as well Ms. Saltzman." Mrs. Ortfine said, Lizzie having not been near as quiet as she had thought. Seeking a way to refocus the class she cast around the room, searching for someone she thought might be able to answer her original query. "Hope, any thoughts?"

Looking up from the book she'd been reading all class, Hope quirked an eyebrow in surprise at being called upon. "On Wade sucking at magic? Or the axis of evil getting detention?" She responded, unable to resist firing a shot a Lizzie, and by extension Alyssa.

"Neither," Ms. Ortfine said, a slight edge to her voice. "About how to cast spells upon multiple targets more efficiently."

"You bind them first." Hope answered easily, "Find a common attribute between your targets, add a binding layer to your spell, and let it seek them out on its own. Works for curses at least."

"I suppose that would work as well," Mrs. Ortfine replied after a moment, not having expected that answer. The type of binding Hope was talking about was highly advanced, used only for the most difficult spells. Most typically for powerful curses, such as the ones that had created the other two supernatural species.

"A simpler way though, is to have multiple witches cast the spell together. Divide the energy expenditure and focus across multiple witches. It's this concept that was the basis upon which many of the original covens were built." Mrs. Ortfine elaborated, disappointed that none of the witches had thought of such an obvious answer. Maybe it was because so few of them had been raised in a proper coven, thus the reason many of them were even at this school in the first place.

"Oh, and Hope? I will refrain from giving you detention today but please, no more referring to your fellow students as evil." Mrs. Ortfine requested, Hope rolling her eyes before nodding in agreement.

"Oh, of course, she gets away without consequences." Lizzie complained, glaring over at Hope.

Giving Lizzie an exaggerated smile, she waved at the angry blonde, before picking up her book and returning to her reading. Mrs. Ortfine was a fine teacher, but this was all stuff she already knew. The only reason she had looked forward to it all was because she thought it'd be interesting seeing what her fellow witches could do but sadly the only thing, she'd seen so far was an excess of snark. If she wanted that she could just go seek out Alyssa or Lizzie on her own time.

* * *

Out near the old mill Josie was glaring angrily at a row of soon to be rotten cabbages she'd taken from the kitchen storeroom. With Lizzie having detention there hadn't been anything in particular she needed to do and having only recently gotten un-grounded hadn't wanted to spend the rest of the day in her room. So here she was trying to put the day's earlier Spellcasting lesson to practical use and failing spectacularly.

" _Incendia_ ," Josie tried again, trying to set all six of the cabbages ablaze. Embers flickered around each of them for a moment, seeming as if they'd catch fire before dying in an instant. Pouting at the failed attempt she shook her head as she realized that she barely had enough magic left for another try.

Focusing she readied herself to try again when the cabbages suddenly exploded without warning, showering the wall they were against with leafy remains and getting her to jump a good foot off the ground in shock. For a second she wondered if she had somehow done that before the sound of someone snickering reached her ears.

Turning she found Hope Mikaelson of all people a few feet away, leaning against a tree, one hand holding her ribs, the other over her mouth as she tried and failed to keep her laughter from escaping. "I'm sorry," Hope finally got out, as Josie continued to stare at her in surprise. "I saw a chance and couldn't resist."

"It's fine." Josie said, a smile coming to her lips. She couldn't remember hearing Hope laugh like this in years, and it was hard to find a reason to be mad at her with it ringing in her ears. It was actually kind of cute how happy Hope seemed to be at having startled her.

"I don't think I had enough left for another attempt anyways." Josie continued, flicking her head to get her hair out of her eyes as she straightened her back. Lizzie should nearly be done with her detention, she should probably go find her before she found another way to get into trouble.

"From what I saw I doubt you had enough magic to start with. Who did you siphon from?" Hope asked, wondering who Josie had borrowed the magic to practice with from. Given how quickly the siphoners burned through magic she would have needed to take quite a bit to be able to cast area of effect spells, more than she was likely willing too.

"I bumped into a vampire on the way out and siphoned off of him." Josie answered, looking down at her feet in a way that made Hope immediately suspicious.

Thinking through the likely candidates Hope realized who Josie had borrowed her magic from, "Let me guess, Lizzie's latest fling?" Lizzie was notorious for having dated nearly every guy at the Salvatore school that was within a year of her age. Given that Grayson was a fifteen-year-old vamp it looked like she'd decided to move up. "Was he able to walk afterwards?"

"What? Yes. Why wouldn't he be?" Josie asked, looking up at Hope with a little bit of alarm. Of course he was able to walk. He had just happened to be napping in the common room… and she might have extended how long that nap would be for.

"Because you had a crush on him, and Lizzie swooped in and stole him." Hope answered, Josie looking at her in shock. "I may not care about the school drama but that doesn't mean I don't pick up on it."

"Ugh," Josie groaned, tilting her head back and looking to the sky for answers. She wondered how Hope had picked up on it, the tribrid hadn't even been at the school when she had really been crushing on him. "You can't tell Lizzie."

"Do I ever talk to Lizzie about anything?" Hope pointed out. Besides it was a moot point, the whole reason she had known about Josie's crush was because she had overheard Lizzie bragging about having stolen Grayson out from under her twin while in the bathroom.

"Fair point." Josie admitted, Lizzie and Hope never spoke to each other unless it was to exchange insults. Not that Hope and herself were all that much better. "But it's not like I'd expect the two of us to have a normal conversation either."

"I like you better than Lizzie." Hope said casually, missing the slight blush it caused on Josie as she shrugged her shoulders. "You're less evil."

"And hey, I think you actually got lucky with missing out on Grayson. From what I've heard he kind of sucks." Hope continued, despite having heard no such thing. She wasn't all that sure she could have picked Grayson out of a lineup of the school vamps. But it was the type of thing that it helped to say in a situation like this.

"Well the magic I siphoned from him certainly sucked." Josie said, Hope smiling at that. Siphoning from vampires was always tricky as their strength depended in part on how well fed they were. There wasn't much danger of accidentally killing one, but it was surprising easily to pull enough to cause them to start desiccating. From a werewolf or witch, she could pull more as there was a higher threshold before the negative effects began, although she still had to show restraint and not take too much.

"Like I was saying earlier, you probably didn't take enough magic. Increasing the area a spell effects takes a lot of energy. You only use them over casting multiple spells because it's faster and takes less focus, but it does actually require more energy." Hope explained filling in the gaps for Josie. Casting a spell over an area was actually pretty wasteful, as you ended up directing the magic into empty areas where there would be no effect.

"I'm not sure I even understand why it's supposed to be easier." Josie admitted, not too sure why you just wouldn't aim at each target separately.

"Think of it as needing to fill up several glasses with water. You can go to each one separately and fill them up, that would be just casting multiple spells. Or you could do as Mrs. Ortfine said and have others help, so you would be able to fill them all at once." Hope explained, giving a version of the explanation she had received from Freya when learning.

"You can also try to fill each glass simultaneously from one source, but that would require another tool to do so... honestly that one doesn't work as well with this example." Hope admitted with a shrug, Josie smiling at that. It actually was possible for a witch to do that, it just wasn't easy. "And of course area of effect spells. Those are the equivalent of just dumping a bucket of water on the glasses. They all get filled quickly but it makes a mess and there's a bunch of waste."

"So what would what you said be? About using a binding agent?" Josie asked, curious if Hope had an example for that.

"Huh, I guess... I guess it would be like telling the water to fill the glasses itself." Hope said, snickering a bit at the image it conjured. That one didn't work so well with her example either. "And here, since I interrupted your practice, I'll let you siphon from me." Hope continued, offering a hand to Josie.

Josie paused as she looked at Hope, eyes flicking down to the offered hand. "Are you sure? Most people don't like it when we siphon from them."

"It'll be fine." Hope said, stepping forward and grabbing Josie's hand as she continued to hesitate. Rotating them so that they were facing the remains of the cabbages Josie had taken, she gestured for her to continue. "Start by taking as much from me as you did from Grayson."

"Alright." Josie said, still not too sure about this. Focusing she pulled magic from Hope, stopping after only a couple of seconds.

"That's it?" Hope asked, looking at Josie curiously. She had barely felt that at all. "That's not even half of what you need. Go ahead and take more."

"Hope are you sure about this? I don't want to take too much and hurt you." Josie said, subconsciously squeezing the hand she was still holding. The amount she had taken was as much as she dared take from a vampire before there was risk of desiccation. And Hope was saying to take at least twice that?

"Josie. Mythical one of a kind tribrid here. You can take ten times that much and I won't even feel it." Hope said, reassuring the Saltzman twin she could handle it. This was the first time she could remember being with Josie without her eviler twin around, it was kind of nice. Maybe Dr. Saltzman was right and it was possible for them to be friends. Maybe.

"I hope you're right," Josie said, they're connected hands starting glow once more. This time she focused not on the amount she was drawing, but rather on the amount of magic she had to draw from. It was staggering. She had known Hope was powerful but this… she couldn't even feel a limit to it. With everyone she had siphoned from before she could always feel the limit to their reserves, whether it was her mom, someone from the school or her Aunt Bonnie. With Hope there wasn't limit she could feel, just a seemingly bottomless reserve of magic.

"Now, try your spell again." Hope directed, letting go of Josie's hand and nodding toward the cabbage remains strewn around the wall.

" _Incendia_ ," Josie cast, aiming her spell at about a foot-thick strip along the edge of the old mill. And this time it worked. Flames leapt up from the ground instantly, covering the entire area she had wanted. But they didn't stop there, instead roaring upwards, still contained in the zone she'd targeted but now towering twenty feet high, high enough to actually hide the old mill from view.

" _Vid aer_ ," Hope cast, having been ready for such a thing to happen. The flames died as quickly as they had appeared as she pulled the very oxygen they needed for fuel from the area, Hope holding the spell for moment to make sure there was no risk of the fire returning before releasing the spell. There was a dull wump as the air pressure returned to normal, both girls reflexively reaching for their ears as they popped.

"See? You can do it, you just didn't have access to enough magic." Hope said, smiling over at Josie. The other girl didn't seem as happy as she was, instead staring at the blackened grass and side of the mill where the flames she had conjured had been.

She had never lost control of her magic before like that. One of the perks of being a Gemini was that she always able to siphon just what she needed, there was never any risk of losing control. Or so she had thought. "Uh… thank you." Josie said finally, Hope looking at her curiously as she wondered what was going on.

"You're welcome?" Hope replied, head tilting as she surveyed Josie. The girl appeared to be spooked by the spell she had cast. At least that was what it looked like to her. But surely she had known that she was capable of something like this already?

"Yeah. Umm… I'm going back to school now. Lizzie's probably waiting for me." Josie said, backing away from the old mill and Hope as she gave her justification for leaving. With one last glance at the blackened ground around the building she turned and headed for the school, leaving a confused Hope behind her wondering what had just happened.

* * *

Close to two weeks had passed since running into Josie by the old mill and things were pretty much the same as ever. Hope and Lizzie still spat insults at each other whenever an opportunity presented itself, the vast majority of the school avoided her as she wanted, and she had no social life to speak off. One of the few changes was that Josie was no longer hostile to her, in fact the two had actually had a few relatively normal conversations since then. The girl had even smiled and waved at her in the hallway earlier, a perfectly mundane interaction for anyone else but completely out of the ordinary for Hope Mikaelson.

*Thwack* "Focus, Hope." Alaric advised, having just landed a clean blow to the tribrid's forehead with his bo staff.

"Ow..." Hope whined, rubbing at the spot where she had just been popped. Shaking her head to clear her thoughts she returned her focus to the sparing match, trying to use the unfamiliar bo staff to get even with Dr. Saltzman.

That had been the other big change, that she had started training with Dr. Saltzman again. She had found that she had far too much free time once classes ended, and the training helped fill the void better than just binge watching TV shows. Plus given the way her life had gone not learning everything she could about fighting seemed like malpractice.

Returning her attention to the fight she swung out with her staff, letting it slide out of her off hand and swinging with just one to increase it's reach. Dr. Saltzman blocked as she had known he would, Hope taking a step forward and pushing the base of her staff at him, before spinning it to take it up in both hands again.

Moving quickly Alaric blocked that as well, twisting his staff in an attempt to loop it behind Hope's and pull it away. He succeeded, or thought he had anyways, as he felt Hope's give way before realizing she had taken hold with just one hand again. Bringing her staff down to the floor she took hold of the far end with both hands before using it sweep his legs out from under him.

"Ow," Alaric said, rubbing his sore backside as he lay on the ground. Hope had a knack for coming up with maneuvers that would never work without the superhuman strength she had access too. It was something he was happy to encourage, even if it was a little painful at times.

"Need me to heal you?" Hope asked, having had to do so a few times already before today. Fortunately the man didn't seem to mind the injuries, and it wasn't exactly difficult for her to do so.

"Don't worry, the only thing you hurt is his pride," came a voice from the side, getting Hope to jump as she turned and saw Caroline there.

"Uhhh..." Hope started, looking to Dr. Saltzman for guidance on how to proceed.

"Oh, don't worry you're not in any trouble. Rick told me that he'd be training you." Caroline said, waving off Hope's concerns. She still wasn't happy with why it had started but she could see the merits of it. "Besides the old man was probably going stir crazy without anyone to fight with."

"Hey! Easy on the old man part." Alaric said taking offense with that. What she had said about going stir crazy he was going to leave alone as it was fairly accurate.

"You are old." Hope chimed in, laughing at the look Alaric gave her.

"If we want to be technical, I've barely been alive longer than you." Alaric said, getting Caroline to shake his head. It depended how you counted his time as a vampire but even if you ignored that there were plenty of other times he'd died.

"Umm, no. We're not counting from the last time you died." Hope retorted, shaking her head in protest. If they did that then she would be older than both her Uncle Kol and Aunt Davina and that did not work for her.

"He should add a year for every time he died, that would likely get him over sixty." Caroline suggested, getting Hope to start laughing. "But that's enough picking on the old man for now, I actually came down here to remind him that we have dinner obligations tonight and he needs to look... not like this."

Alaric sighed at that, having forgotten about their semi-regular smoozefest at the mayor's. The things he did to keep up appearances. "Fine, I guess that'll be all for today Hope."

"Same time tomorrow then? Assuming your old bones can handle it." Hope taunted, smiling to herself as she left.

"See what you started?" Alaric complained to Caroline, wincing as he started to walk back up to the school. Maybe he shouldn't have turned down Hope's offer.

"Here," Caroline said, biting into her wrist to open up her own veins, as having him wincing all through dinner would just be annoying. Taking the offered blood, Alaric drank deeply before stopping once he felt his injuries heal. "Maybe you should take some blood before you spar, that way when she inevitably kills you by accident you'll come back."

Alaric shook his head at that, ignoring the barb. They both knew he was too skilled to let that happen. And it wasn't as if he didn't have an insurance plan in place in case something did go terribly wrong to begin with. Living with supernaturals for so long had taught him to always prepare for the worst case scenario.

* * *

Stepping out of her room Hope made her way down the hall for a late night shower, having gotten caught up on binging a show Marcel had recommended. It had only been when she was about to get ready for bed that she noticed that she was still covered in dirt from the earlier training session and decided to make a detour.

She kind of hated the community showers, so she almost preferred taking one this late as there was no risk of bumping into anyone. Almost on cue she heard a voice from down the hall, "Hope? Why are you up this late?"

"Josie?" Hope asked, turning to see the girl sitting on one of couches in the common area. "I was going to take a shower, why are you out so late?"

"Uhh..." Josie stalled, not having thought this through. Of course Hope would wonder why she was also up. Sighing she just decided to be honest, it's not like Hope would care anyways. "Lizzie asked me to leave her the room tonight."

"What? Why would she do tha-" Hope started before realizing why. Oh. "Ew... ew, ew. I did not need to know that."

Josie laughed at Hope's reaction, it was just so unlike how she pictured the girl. "I take it you haven't..." She asked before she could stop herself, facing turning red as she realized she had.

"Ew, no. I'm fourteen!" Hope retorted, face turning redder than Josie's at that. God, Lizzie was only thirteen and was... nope, not going there. Did not want any of those images in her head. "Besides who would I even-? I mean with who-?"

Josie couldn't help but giggle at how flustered Hope was. "I'm pretty sure anyone in the school would." She said, giving her honest opinion of the situation.

"Oh, does that include you then?" Hope said, seeking any way to turn the awkwardness she felt back on Josie. Seeing the way the girl's eyes widened and her face lit up it seemed it had worked. "Ah, this is awful. I do not want to be thinking of Lizzie and Grayson having sex tonight. Or ever."

"I'll second that," Josie muttered, not happy with it herself. She was really praying that their twin bond had limits because if she had to feel any of it, then she might just have to find a way to get rid of Lizzie.

"Wait? So were you just going to sit out here all night?" Hope asked, looking over at Josie for her answer. Didn't she have a friend she could stay with at least?

"I didn't want to bother anyone," Josie said, looking down at the floor. That was part of it, and she hadn't wanted word of this getting out, which it inevitably would if she stayed somewhere else.

"That's such a terrible idea." Hope said, shaking her head at Josie. "Look, you can stay in my room for the night. That's better than being out here."

"I wouldn't want to intrude," Josie demurred. She and Hope weren't even friends so she was kind of shocked the girl was offering. And staying with the girl she had recently realized she had a crush on just seemed like a bad idea.

"Josie, take my offer. Look, I'm going to go for a run anyways and then get a shower. So just take my key and let yourself in." Hope said, walking over to the girl and holding it out for her to take.

"I don't..." Josie started before Hope cut her off.

"If you say no again I'll be forced to spell you to sleep and carry you there." Hope threatened, giving Josie a smile to let her know she was kidding. Mostly anyways. "You shouldn't be forced to stay out here."

"Fine." Josie relented, taking the key from Hope. "If only so you don't end up kidnapping me."

"That's the spirit," Hope said, before turning to head for the doors leading outside.

"Wait, what do you mean a run?" Josie said, having finally processed that part. It was a little late for that wasn't it?

"I have to do something to get the image of Lizzie's very special night out of my head. I'll probably be gone awhile so just leave the door unlocked and don't wait up." Hope said, giving an almost wolfish grin back to her.

Oh that's what she meant. Was she even allowed to do that? Going by the fact that Hope was already headed outside she either was or didn't care that she wasn't. Honestly either was equally likely. Turning she headed for Hope's room, wishing she had as easy a way to push away the thoughts of what Lizzie and Grayson were doing. Or the thoughts of what Hope had teased the two of them could do.

* * *

Running in her wolf form was always freeing to Hope, in a way that was nearly impossible to describe. Everything just seemed to fade to the background, letting her just run. She had talked with Aunt Keelin about it and compared their transformations, and it seemed like she had greater sense of self while in her wolf form than most did, due to her tribrid nature.

Still it was a welcome relief from her earlier thoughts, as they disappeared from her mind and her expanded senses took over. She could hear every insect in the forest, smell every blade of grass, feel the earth sinking under her weight and the wind brushing against her fur. It felt like freedom.

Not having any destination in mind she ran down to the pier first before turning and starting on a loop of the grounds. It was then that she picked up on something that didn't belong, a smell in the air that shouldn't be out here. Turning slightly she moved to head for it, curiosity driving her as she was unable to place exactly what she was smelling.

* * *

"Come on, shouldn't we at least go back to my room?" Lizzie said as she was pressed into a tree, her hair all sorts of tangled and her clothes bunched up in various places. Josie would kill her if she ended staying away all night when she hadn't even needed too.

"Why? Wouldn't it be more romantic under the stars?" Grayson said, saying what he imagined she'd like to hear.

Lizzie bit into her lip at that before pulling him in for another deep set of kisses. When they broke she could feel herself becoming more turned on with the way he was looking at her, his eyes dark with lust. He wanted her so badly but she wanted to make him earn it more. "But I have some drinks for us back in my room that I'd hate to go to waste."

Grayson licked his lips at that, his eyes darting down to Lizzie's throat for a moment, "I think I'd rather drink what I have here."

Lizzie looked puzzled for a moment before realization dawned on her. Ok, so that was kinda hot. Also not something she was going to be doing. "I don't think so, I'd prefer sipping on stolen alcohol." Courtesy of her dad's rather large stash, although she wasn't too sure she would actually prefer it. It was quite a bit stronger stuff than the normal wine coolers she and her friends split.

"But that's all the way back there, while you're right here." Grayson said, running his fingers along her neck before moving to kiss her temple and working his way down.

"I don't think so," Lizzie said, her voice still having a playful quality to it as she pushed his hand away. She was planning on losing her v-card tonight, not her b-card.

Grayson didn't seem to hear her, now focused on the blood he could hear pulsing through her veins. It was just so tempting, pressing his lips to the side of her neck he pressed kisses to it, even as his fangs started to slide out and his eyes darkened with hunger.

"Grayson." Lizzie warned, the playfulness gone from her voice. "Grayson, no. Grayson." Still he didn't seem to care, and she could practically feel his fangs against her neck.

"Grayson, stop!" She shouted, and that finally got the fifteen-year-old to pause, pulling away from her slowly like he wasn't even sure where he was. What had he been-

It was then that they both heard a low rumble echoing through the area, the source stepping out from the bushes a moment later. A very large gray-furred wolf that was growling menacingly at them. Actually it wasn't at them, just Grayson Lizzie noticed as it drew closer, the wolf's eyes never leaving the teen.

Stepping away from Lizzie Grayson held his hands up peacefully, not wanting a fight. Lizzie didn't seem to have pieced it together yet but he knew a werewolf when he saw one and there was only one kind of wolf that could change without a full moon. He prayed to whoever was out there that Hope had better control than most and wouldn't tear him apart for the fun of it.

Walking slowly Hope circled behind the tree the two horny teens had just been pressed against, it being large enough to conceal her. Forcefully reverting her transformation while hidden from view, she took a few seconds to calm herself from her heightened emotions before speaking. "You should leave. Now."

Not being an idiot the teen vamped out there, disappearing in a blur as he quite literally ran for his life. He didn't think Hope was going to hurt Lizzie, especially while not transformed, but if she had seen the way he was acting there was a very good chance she would hurt him, wolf or not. God, what had he almost done? He thought he had better control of himself than that.

"Hope?" Lizzie said hesitantly, recognizing the voice and you know, the fact that she was the only one who could shift at will. Not receiving an answer she darted around the tree, coming face to face with the girl. "Oh my God! You're naked! Very, very naked!"

"Yes, I know. That's why I was hiding behind the tree." Hope hissed trying to cover everything, while wincing at how loud Lizzie was being. Every vamp in the school could probably hear her.

Covering her eyes Lizzie tried to look away before giving up and just dropping her hands. "Damn you're stacked." She said, giving an appreciative nod as she looked Hope over. Girl had clearly been blessed in a way neither her or her sister had been.

"Lizzie!" Hope snapped, not believing the girl. She had intervened because wolf-Hope had thought she was in trouble. Naked-Hope though was wishing she had just let the girl be eaten.

"What have you got to be embarrassed of? I mean just look at all that." Lizzie said, using Hope's obvious embarrassment to push away the hurt and fear that Grayson had caused.

"I'm going to eat you myself." Hope said, shaking her head as she awkwardly scooted around to the other side of the tree to give herself some privacy.

"I might let you with you looking like that." Lizzie fired back, smirking as she could practically feel Hope's face burning with embarrassment through the tree. Huh, wait did she go for girls too? Hmm, well she could figure out her own sexuality later, right now it was just fun to tease Hope.

"I hate you so much," Hope said, banging the back of her head against the tree. She had walked right into that one.

For a moment things were quiet between them, the two of them just leaning against opposite sides of the tree. "Hope... thanks." Lizzie said finally, saying what she should have said to start with. She didn't know what Grayson might have done if she hadn't been there. It had seemed like he'd gotten his senses back but given that he'd lost them in the first place... It was better that Hope was there.

"It was nothing," Hope deflected, even though they both knew that wasn't the case. Moving away from the tree she got ready to transform again, wanting to get away from there faster. And less naked. "And I won't tell anyone about this."

"Never thought you would." Lizzie admitted, before turning to look on the other side of the tree as she heard something moving. She could just make out a gray wolf moving off into the distance, bringing smile to her face. Turning to make her way back to the school for a moment, thinking to herself that maybe her sister was right and Hope wasn't as bad as they thought.

* * *

Stepping back into her room Hope smiled at the sight of Josie curled up on the couch she had near the window. She looked so peaceful and cute when she was asleep, not evil at all. She was hating to admit it but Dr. Saltzman might be right about his daughters not being evil, even Lizzie. Possibly.

She debated for a moment about what to do with the sleeping girl, part of her just wanting to let her sleep. But she had a feel Lizzie needed someone, god knows she would in her place, and that could really only be Josie. Reaching down she pushed her shoulder, nudging the girl awake. The girl's eyes opened slowly, not seeming to realize where she was before seeing Hope kneeling in front of her.

"Is it morning already?" Josie asked, rubbing at her eyes. It didn't appear to be judging by how dark it was. Looking Hope over she titled her head in confusion, "I thought you were going to take a shower?"

"Wow thanks," Hope said, feeling slightly insulted. Did she really look that bad? Or did she smell? Resisting the urge to sniff herself to check she focused on Josie. "I was going to let you sleep but I ran into Lizzie while on my run and I think she could use your company."

It took a moment for what Hope had said to register but when it did Josie jumped to her feet. "What? What happened? Is she ok?" She asked in a rush, panic building before Hope placed her hands on either shoulder to calm her down.

"She's fine. Just...look, I don't even know how to say it. I just think she'd like to have you there." Hope said, not sure what to say but understanding that Lizzie wouldn't want to be alone tonight.

"Okay." Josie said, nodding to herself as she tried not to panic. If Hope was saying Lizzie needed her and had ran into her while running around outside then it was safe to say that Lizzie's night had not gone as planned. So hopefully it was just relationship drama, something she was well versed in. "I'll go then, thank you for letting me know. And for being willing to let me stay here."

"Anytime," Hope said, Josie looking at her with an eyebrow raised before Hope realized what she'd said. "Ok, so maybe not _any_ time but if you need to... then we'll see."

Josie smiled at that, leaning over and giving Hope a hug that seemed to startle the girl. "Thank you," she said before moving to leave. Pausing at the door, she stopped to lock it, looking back and shaking her head as she saw Hope just throw herself down onto the bed. Pulling the door shut she turned to head down to her own room before pausing.

Reaching into the pocket of the pajamas she'd been wearing she pulled out a note she had written while Hope had been gone. It hadn't been meant to be anything, just a way of distracting herself from what Lizzie and Grayson were doing. What it ended up being was a confession, perhaps not the best written one, but an honest one. One that detailed the crush she had on Hope and the, for lack of a better word, hope, that the girl felt something similar.

Walking back to Hope's door she paused, before summoning up the courage to slide it under the door. Shaking with a mix of fear and excitement she backed away from the door, shocked she'd actually done it. Well, no going back now. Moving away once more she made her way down to the hall, back to the room she shared with her twin.

* * *

"Lizzie?" Josie said, opening the door with the key she had been sure to bring when she'd left earlier. She was not going to get caught out in the hallways in her pajamas the next morning because Lizzie had locked her out.

"Josie?" Lizzie answered, surprised to hear her twins' voice.

Hearing the sound come from her bed Josie knew that Hope had been right about her needing her. Shutting the door behind her she crawled into her bed, wrapping her arms around Lizzie. For a moment she just hugged her sister, waiting to see if she would speak first.

"How did you know to come back?" Lizzie asked, wiping a couple of tears away before holding onto her sister's hand like it was a lifeline.

"Hope ran into me, she said that you might need me." Josie simplified, not wanting to get into the fact that she'd been sleeping in Hope's room.

"She did, huh?" Lizzie said, smiling at that. Ok, the tribrid was definitely not as bad as she thought she was. "She ran into me.. well us, outside, while in wolf form."

Josie nodded at that, not bothering to say anything while waiting for Lizzie to elaborate. She didn't need to know everything that had happened, she just needed to be here for her sister.

"Grayson, he... I think he was going to bite me." Lizzie said, feeling the way Josie tensed up at that. She didn't need to see her twins face to imagine the anger that'd be on it. "He didn't, obviously. And I'm not sure he would have. But then Hope showed up and scared him away. Well wolf-Hope."

"I'm glad she was there for you." Josie said, letting her anger fade as she heard Hope had been there to stop anything bad from happening. And it seemed that it had made Lizzie soften toward Hope as well, which might make things easier.

"Me too," Lizzie admitted, the idea of what might have happened having been running through her head every time her thoughts slipped. The ideas ranged from bad, to very bad, to dead, to very bad then dead. Not exactly pleasant.

"So she just scared him off then left without saying anything?" Josie asked, thinking that seemed like something Hope would do.

Getting an evil smirk Lizzie snorted as she remembered the rest of her run-in with Hope, "Oh no she said a bunch. Mostly some variation of 'Go away Lizzie, I'm naked.'" Lizzie ad-libbed, relaying the meaning behind what Hope had been saying if not the words.

"Wha-" Josie got out, more than a little shocked. Why had Hope been naked?

"Yeah, apparently wolves don't take their clothes with them when they transform. Who knew?" Lizzie said, having been surprised by that. It felt like something that should be covered in class but either she'd missed it or it wasn't. Maybe they hadn't wanted to embarrass them? "Also she is just... damn. I was jealous. And maybe a little turned on? Haven't worked that part out yet."

What? Lizzie was-? For Hope? The Hope she had just left a confession letter to? Josie's brain shutdown for a minute at that, not sure what to say. All of a sudden the idea of Lizzie warming up to Hope didn't seem so great.

"Josie? You ok there?" Lizzie asked, having noticed her twin freeze up.

"Yeah, of course. I'm just glad she was there for you." Josie repeated, forcing her body to relax even as her mind raced through the possibilities of what to do.

"Yeah," Lizzie said, a slight smile on her face at the thought. "You might be right, she might not be that bad after all."

Josie just nodded at that, not trusting herself to speak. Feeling Lizzie snuggle in closer, finally moving to go to sleep, she tried to do so the same. Her alarm was set for early anyways, she could just go get the note in the morning. Hope and Lizzie never needed to know that she had even wrote it.

* * *

On her knees outside Hope's door early the next morning Josie tried in vain to retrieve the note she had written. It was just too far inside for her to do so, even with the coat hanger she'd thought to bring to help. Why had she pushed it so far in? Why had she locked the door in the first place?

Every passing second brought more desperation for her. It was early and she was likely the first up but it wouldn't stay that way for long. She had to find a way to get that note back and destroy it... Wait she didn't really need to get it back did she? She just needed a way to destroy it.

Siphoning magic out of the walls she mentally prepared herself, regretting that she didn't know some kind of telekinesis or summoning spell. She was going to learn one after this, and if there wasn't one then she'd invent the damn thing. Laying against the floor she peered under the door, taking aim at the note she could just barely see. " _Incendia._ "

* * *

**Author's Note:** Is it still a cliff-hanger if we all know what comes next? No idea, but I enjoyed writing it. And again, leave comments, I always like reading those and seeing what people thought. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftermath of Josie setting Hope's room on fire.

**Author's Note:** And here's the aftermath of Josie trying to win an award for Worst Ways To Handle A Crush. Enjoy and leave reviews, cause I like those. 

**Hanging On By A Thread**

The smell of smoke was what woke her up, Hope staring at that the fire sweeping across her room wondering how the hell it had happened and honestly not knowing if she was still dreaming for a moment. She couldn't tell why or how it had started but it had already consumed many of her paintings and materials in the far corner of her room. The couch near the window that Josie had been sleeping on last night had flames covering nearly half of it, and they were spreading rapidly across her room.

Finally getting her self into gear she pushed away the smoke surrounding her with a quick spell before focusing on the fire. _"Vid aer,"_ she cast, sucking the air out of that side of her room and putting the fire out in seconds. With the flames gone now she flicked her wrist at the window, shattering it with another spell and pushing the smoke out of the room to clear the air. It was only then that she realized someone was calling for her through the door.

"Hope! Hope! Open the door dammit." She could hear Dr. Saltzman yelling, moving to do so until her door was knocked clean of it's hinges, Caroline vamping into the room a second later.

"Hope! Are you okay? What happened?" Caroline asked, looking the young teen over. She had been out in town getting breakfast and had come back to the school to find everything in a panic as a fire had started in Hope's room.

"I don't know. I woke up and everything was..." Hope said before trailing off, finally looking around and seeing what she had lost. Almost all of her artwork and related supplies had been consumed by the flames, along with her laptop and some of the clothes she had scattered across that side of the room. The paintings were all she really cared about though, feeling tears starting to well up as she realized they were all gone. The only one she had ever made with her dad, a few of the ones that her mom had helped her with, two that she had made of Marcel and Rebekah, the one she'd been working on as a gift for Freya and Keelin. They were all gone.

Seeing the girl starting to break down Caroline gestured to her partner, Alaric working to move the few students that had gathered outside out of the way. Fortunately it was early still so not too many were up. "I'm so sorry."

"It's... it's fine." Hope said in an entirely unbelievable manner, shrugging her shoulders as she tried to act like it didn't hurt. "It was an accident, those happen. Nothing I can do about it."

"Hope... you don't have to pretend to be ok all the time." Caroline said, placing a hand on the girl's arm to reassure her. That seemed to be the tipping point, Hope pushing herself into the woman and letting the tears flow. Caroline just held the girl, wondering how long Hope had been holding back for. God knows she'd been through enough that it was hard to tell.

Stepping into the room after shooing away the onlookers Alaric took a look around, wincing at the damage done. Leaving Hope to Caroline he walked around the burned area, careful to test the floor and make sure it would hold before looking to see if he could find the source of the fire. "I think it was a wiring fault." Alaric said, getting them to look over at him.

Pointing he showed them where the wall had been scorched through, revealing several wires that had been charred. He wasn't an arson inspector so it was hard to tell but looked like the fire could have started from there. Honestly it was either that or someone had done this on purpose, and while there were plenty that might want too there weren't many that had either the ability or guts to do so.

"See? An accident. That's all," Hope said, moving away from Caroline and starting to pull herself back together. Part of her wondered if someone had done this but an accident made sense and caused less trouble for everyone.

"We'll repair everything and replace whatever was lost, at no charge to you of course." Caroline said, dropping into her Headmistress role as she saw that Hope had calmed down. It would be a hit to the school's emergency fund but nothing that couldn't be replaced in time.

Hope gave an ugly snort of a laugh at that, as if they could replace what she'd lost. And she didn't give a damn about having to pay for it, she had plenty of money. In fact, "How about I pay for it, and I get to throw in some upgrades?"

"What kind of upgrades?" Alaric asked, glancing suspiciously around the room and wondering if Hope had set it herself before shaking his head to rid himself of the thought. If she had she wouldn't have let it consume the paintings.

"A bathroom and shower of my own to start with," Hope said, tired of having to use the girl's room down the hallway. "Maybe a microwave, I don't know. Haven't thought it all out yet."

"I don't know if I'm comfortable having you shoulder the bill for this," Caroline said, looking at Rick to see how he felt.

"Really? My family has given enough money to this school that the name on the door should say Mikaelson by now." Hope retorted, getting Caroline to wince as the point hit home. The school had several donors, many quite wealthy, but the Mikaelson's had supported it since near it's founding and provided nearly half the funds the school had used since.

"Yeah, but the Mikaelson School just doesn't have the same ring to it that the Salvatore School does." Alaric pointed out, getting Hope to look at him oddly before trying to conceal a laugh.

"Hmm, the Mikaelson Institute maybe?" Caroline said, joining in with Rick. "No, everyone would think we were an asylum then."

"The Mikaelson Academy?" Hope offered, getting the two adults to smile as she turned her attention away from what she'd lost for a moment. "That sounds... fine."

"Eh..." Alaric said, shrugging his shoulders noncommittally.

"Oh fine, you can leave it as the Salvatore School." Hope said, having to admit that it did have a nice ring to it. "But I'm still upgrading my room."

"We'll agree to discuss it." Caroline said, willing to say only that much for now. Honestly she'd probably let her, it would likely help Hope deal with the loss of her stuff if she had hand in rebuilding the room. And it wasn't as if she didn't have money to burn, having inherited her mother, father and in particular her uncle's fortunes. Elijah hadn't worn ten-thousand dollar suits and driven around in a Bentley for nothing after all.

* * *

"What's going on?" Lizzie asked, grabbing her twin as she saw her sitting on one of the benches in the hallway. Josie looked like she had just seen someone get murdered, which seemed unlikely but wasn't as impossible as she would like.

"Uh, there was a fire. In Hope's room." Josie said, giving a nervous glance around even as she did. How had this happened? She had just cast a tiny fire spell to destroy the note. What she hadn't noticed had been the fan Hope kept going in her room constantly, and once the note had started to burn it ended up getting blown across the room. Once it landed among the easily combustible painting and art supplies it hadn't taken long to become the roaring blaze that had destroyed half the room.

"Was she hurt?" Lizzie asked, concern flashing across her face for a moment before she pushed it away. As if the tribrid would be hurt by something like this.

"I don't think so..." Josie said, having seen her mom enter the room and her dad shooing people away. If Hope had been hurt she doubted he would have been so calm. Oh god, she could have set Hope on fire! That thought suddenly hit her, the idea of hurting the girl like that making her physically ill.

"Are you ok?" Lizzie asked, seeing her sister suddenly clutching at her stomach.

"I'm fine. Some of the smoke must have got to me."Josie lied, not having been near enough to room for the smoke to have effected her. She had practically ran from Hope's room after casting her spell, and had been getting an early breakfast when she heard the commotion.

"Well breathe better then?" Lizzie said slowly getting a confused look from her twin. "Ok, so I don't know how to treat smoke sickness."

"I'm pretty certain it's called smoke inhalation," Josie corrected, getting Lizzie to roll her eyes.

"Whatever. So who do you think did it?" Lizzie said, sitting down next to her sister and thus missing the look of sheer terror on Josie's face.

"What? Why do you think anyone did it?" Josie said, trying to speak as normally as possible and not sound guilty. Given that her voice only squeaked once she thought she did pretty well.

"Oh please, you think a fire just magically started in Hope's room?" Lizzie said, before pausing as she thought about what she said. "Bad wording, it was definitely started magically but you know, cast by someone. So who? My money's on Alyssa Chang. She's bitchy enough."

"Why does it have to be started by anyone?" Josie said, hoping that Lizzie would just drop this line of thought. The last thing she needed was for anyone to start thinking that it had been deliberate, as even if they didn't find out it was her it would still cause problems.

"Or maybe it was the wolves, one of them could've chucked a burning pinecone through her window." Lizzie said, ignoring her sister as she started thinking through the possibilities. "If Grayson hadn't been about to pee all over himself last night I might've thought he had done it."

"Why can't it just be an accident?" Josie said, as that was what it actually was. A horrible stupid accident because she wanted to get rid of note confessing to her crush. And had somehow handled it so badly that she ended up setting Hope's room on fire with the tribrid in it.

"You should read more," Lizzie said, getting a glare in response for that. "Stuff like this is never an accident. There's always someone behind it and let's face it, there's plenty of people that would like to set Hope on fire."

"Yeah, and you're probably at the top of that list." Josie snapped back, Lizzie actually looking hurt for a second at what she had said.

"I may not like Hope, but I would never want to hurt her." Lizzie said, her sister having the decency to at least look ashamed at having suggested as much. Sure her and Hope had never gotten along, constantly fighting with each other since they were kids but she had never wanted her to be hurt. She wasn't that kind of a person.

"I- I know that." Josie said, although if she was being honest there had been times she wasn't so sure. Hope and Lizzie fought like cats and dogs and for as little reason. If she hadn't been the one to set the fire she might have actually suspected Lizzie of doing so. Well if Lizzie hadn't seemed to have had a bonding moment with the teen herself the night before.

Seeing Hope exiting her room along with her parents Josie decided to use that as a distraction, "Well, it looks like Hope's alright at least." Josie said, feeling a wave of relief wash over her. At least she hadn't actually harmed her.

Turning Lizzie looked down the hall to see Hope for herself, the tribrid seeming to be arguing with her parents about something. As if feeling her gaze Hope looked over at her and Josie and for a second Lizzie thought she was going to smile at them. Instead her eyes narrowed in a glare, confusing Lizzie, "Why does it look like she's pissed at us?"

"I don't know," Josie said, tensing up as she noticed the look on Hope's face. Did she know it was her that had started the fire somehow?

Before Lizzie could respond someone else came up from the opposite end of the hall, "Hey Lizzie." Grayson said as he came from behind them, the two girls turning to look at the teen vampire and missing the way Hope's glare focused in on him. "Do you think we could talk?"

Lizzie glanced at Josie for a second, before steeling herself. "You have one minute. Start talking."

"I was hoping we could talk alone?" Grayson asked, resisting the urge to flinch as he saw Josie glare at him.

"You must be crazy if you think I'm letting you be alone with my sister." Josie said, practically snarling at the vampire. He was lucky that she'd been distracted by her crush on Hope, otherwise it might've been his room that caught fire, and far less accidentally.

That was probably fair Grayson had to admit, even while trying to think of a better way to go about this. Glancing around the hallway he saw Hope at the other end of it glaring at him and felt a wave of fear run down his spine. Screw trying to find a better way to do this, he was going to say what he needed to and get the hell out of here. "I'm sorry for what happened last night, I don't know what came over me. And it won't happen again. With anyone. And uh, yeah we should break up."

The Saltzman twins just stared at the teen that, trying to get through everything he had said. Was that really it? Hey sorry for almost biting you, oh and we should break up. Even as Lizzie tried to think of what to say, Grayson vanished, vamping out of there after saying his piece. "What a dick," Josie said finally, Lizzie nodding in agreement. Pulling herself together she started to launch into a tirade just as she saw her parents approaching them. What did they need to talk to them about so early?

* * *

"You have to be kidding." Lizzie said, glaring at her parents as they informed her of the bad news. Due to Hope's room having spontaneously combusted they had decided to cancel their Spring Break trip next week to Florida. She had been looking forward to it for months and now it was just gone. "Why?"

"We have to stay and oversee the contractors when they come to fix Hope's room." Caroline explained, looking between her two daughters. Josie seemed to be handling it ok, just staring down at her feet, while Lizzie looked like she was about to fly off the handle.

"So let someone else babysit them, why does it need to be you?" Lizzie retorted, nearly shouting back at her parents at this point. First Grayson nearly eats her, then he had the gall to come by and break up with her this morning, not even giving her the satisfaction of dumping his ass before just vamping away. And now this? She had been hoping to use the break as time to get over the loser but now it was being taken away too.

"We can't do that. Having so many humans on campus is already a risk, we can't be absent as well." Alaric said, trying to explain things to his daughter. In a lot of ways this happening right before Spring Break had been a blessing, there would be a lot less students around as those that could went home.

"This is bullshit!" Lizzie yelled, standing up and starting to pace around the office. Was this why Hope had been glaring at her earlier? Had she known of their trip and been jealous that they had family to spend time with? That made zero sense of course but her brain latched on to it and ran with it, "First you start spending all your time with Hope, and now you're canceling our family's trip over her!"

With every word Lizzie became more animated, gesturing wildly around the room as her voice got louder, her parents looking at each other in concern. "Lizzie..." Caroline said, moving to hold her daughter to try to calm her down. That ended up being a mistake.

Without any magic Lizzie's rant was harmless, if a little concerning. As her mom touched her though Lizzie siphoned off of her without even realizing, drawing in the magic subconsciously. "No!" Lizzie shouted, not wanting her mom to try and placate her right now. As she did the magic she'd unknowingly taken exploded out of her, a wave of energy that shattered the windows and sent her mom, dad, and twin tumbling across the room.

"Wha- what? Did I?" Lizzie asked, looking around the room at what she'd caused. Her mom and dad were looking at each other in concern while Josie seemed to be in shock about what had just happened. Turning Lizzie ran, throwing the doors open and dashing down the hall. Ignoring the looks from the other students she headed for the front doors, nearly running into Hope who had just been leaving the common area. Glaring at her she angrily shoved the slightly taller girl out of the way, before making her way outside.

"What the hell?" Hope yelled after her, wondering why in the world the girl was running. There was a flash as a vampire shot past her, the familiar scent that lingered in the air behind her letting her know it was Caroline. Looking back the way she had come from she could see Dr. Saltzman shutting the door to his study, a nervous looking Josie at his side.

Seeing the brunette she started towards her, hoping that she could shed some light on what was going on. Seeing her approach though Josie's eyes went wide with what looked like fear, before she turned and practically ran down one of the other hallways. Left just standing there Hope felt her face fall as she wondered what was going on. After last night she'd thought that at least her and Josie could be friends but given the way she was running away from her it didn't seem that would be the case.

* * *

"You know that you don't have to come every time," Caroline said, sitting on a bench outside of Lizzie's therapist's office with her other daughter. It had taken some work to find a therapist that dealt with witches, obviously not being something she could just post an ad for online. She managed to find a good one in D.C. though, and the woman had even agreed to come down to Richmond to do her twice weekly sessions with Lizzie. For a hefty bonus of course.

"I do, though. I need to be here for Lizzie." Josie replied, not exactly thrilled about it but feeling she needed to be here. An hour in the car here, two hours sitting around waiting, and then another hour back. Not exactly the most thrilling way to spend her time. But it was her fault this was even happening.

She had been the one to start the fire in Hope's room that led to their Spring Break getting canceled. It had been because of her that Lizzie had snapped. It was her fault and she didn't even have the courage to own up to it. Instead she was just tagging along with her sister, acting like everything was fine. At least it got her out of the school, where she couldn't be seen pining for Hope. Lizzie already seemed to be getting suspicious of her and the last thing she needed was for her twin to find out she had a crush on the girl, that could only make things worse at this point.

"You're a great sister," Caroline said, giving her daughter a hug. It had always impressed her how willing Josie was to look out others, a trait she had to have gotten from her biological mother as it certainly hadn't come from her. Lizzie on the other hand seemed to have picked up on all of her traits, for better and for worse.

"But, if you're going to insist on coming up here, then you need to find something to do while you're here. I don't want you coming all the way here to just sit around in the office." Caroline continued, not wanting her daughter to just sit around up here. Lizzie at least had books to read on her tablet during the trip, Josie just stuck her headphones in and zoned out most of the way.

"What is there even to do around here?" Josie asked, wondering what her mom had in mind.

"Well I could probably find a gymnastics or dance class nearby if you wanted to do that."Caroline said, before laughing at the look on her daughter's face. Right, that was more something that Lizzie would like. "Or I'm sure we could find someone offering music lessons, I know you enjoy that."

"Maybe," Josie said, not sure if what she really wanted to do that either. She liked music of course, both playing and singing but it was more something she wanted to work through on her own. What she would really like was something that could help her as a witch but they were unlikely to find that here in Richmond. She was pretty sure there was a coven in the city, there tended to be at least one in any city that was large or old enough after all, but she had no idea how to go about contacting them.

"Well you think about it and let me know," Caroline said, keeping her arm around her daughter as she did. Whatever Josie wanted she'd get it for her, even if it meant compelling a few humans to work around her schedule. "And if you ever decide you don't want to come with Lizzie then that's ok too. I don't want you to feel obligated."

Josie just nodded at that, not ever intending to take her up on it. She'd be there for her sister for as long as she needed her. And even when Lizzie felt like she didn't then she'd still be there anyways.

* * *

"Ok, what's going on?" Alaric asked, wincing at the force that Hope was putting into her punches. They were working on hand to hand combat today, mostly in making sure that Hope could transition from a chain of punches to kicks, elbows, or knees seamlessly.

"It's. Your. Stupid. Evil. Brats." Hope said in between blows, punctuating the last one with a kick that drove Alaric backwards.

"What have they done this time?" Alaric asked, sighing as he put the pads down and tried to get feeling back into his hand.

"It's just...ugh, I don't even know. I thought things were getting better for a week or two but now things might be worse than they were before." Hope said, moving to get a drink of water as Dr. Saltzman had decided it was time for a break. Lizzie was mostly just being typical Lizzie, although it felt like there was more bite to her insults lately. Josie on the other hand had developed a startling ability to disappear whenever Hope was around and that honestly hurt more than Lizzie's barbs.

"Well Lizzie's going through some stuff right now and Josie's trying to be there for her. So maybe that's why." Alaric said, knowing damn well that was why. Lizzie seemed to have a grudge against Hope for having the bad luck of having her room catch fire right before spring break. Which was idiotic but he wasn't about to actually tell his daughter that given her current state.

"Speaking of going through some stuff, there needs to be better sex-ed for the vamps. Or a refresher course at least." Hope said suddenly, wanting to get the topic off of her. Alaric choked on the water he was taking a sip from at what she had said. Not her intention but a nice bonus.

"What? Why are you saying- oh god, please tell me you didn't?" Alaric said, looking at Hope with what she could best described as disappointment.

"What? No, ew. This isn't about about me at all." Hope said, shaking her head in rebuttal. "I went out for a run the other night and found one of the vamps about to take a bite out of their date. I don't think that's what they intended but if I hadn't stepped in then who knows what might have happened."

Hope was smart he'd give her that, no names, no genders, and not even giving him an accurate date to try to figure out who it was. It wasn't subtle but since she didn't want to get whoever it was in trouble he'd let it go for know. "We go over it with every new vamp that comes to the school but I'll admit that there might be gaps in what they learn."

Werewolves and witches didn't have the same issues that vampires did. They still had to deal with the heightened hormones and emotional state but they weren't likely to be triggered by them in the same way a vampire might be. There was a thin line for a vampire between arousal and hunger, and young vampires especially had a hard time not crossing from one to the other.

"Who does it? You?" Hope asked, now curious about the process. Every student had to go through a two week sex-ed class with Emma during 6th grade but it hadn't gone into that much detail on the particularities between species. It had made up for that though by going into excruciating detail on everything else.

"No. Caroline actually does it." Alaric said, being quite happy that it wasn't him. It was best to keep the fact that he had been a vampire for a time secret anyways, it helped avoid a lot of questions.

Hope processed that for a moment before smirking, "She's awful at it, isn't she?"

"She could be better." Alaric couched, not wanting to entirely throw her under the bus. It wasn't that she was bad but rather that she wanted to be done with it as quickly as possible and tended to rush through it.

Hope laughed at that, not able to see the woman giving the birds and the bees talk to new vamps. "What if I said I knew someone that could do a refresher course for all of them, that knew first hand what it was like?"

"I would say it depends which one you're referring too," Alaric replied, knowing there were really only three vampires that Hope knew. And it would be a cold day in hell before he allowed Kol Mikaelson to step foot inside this school. Still if one of their vampires had been close to losing control then it was likely that others were struggling as well. "Ok, who do you have in mind?"

* * *

"What are you staring at?" Lizzie said, throwing herself onto the couch in the common area beside her sister who was pretending to be reading something for her Japanese language course. She couldn't believe out of all the things that she could have done that she'd chosen the one thing that led to more homework. Sure there were some spells that sounded cool that were Japanese but it was just too much work.

"Nothing," Josie said, returning her attention to her Beginner's Guide to Japanese.

"Uh huh," Lizzie said, obviously not believing that. Following the path Josie had been looking she ignored the senior goth coven that was loudly discussing whether it was still possible to summon Hellfire and instead focused in on Hope who was seated on the far end of the room. It was rare for her to hang out in the common area, and but apparently she had picked today of all days to hang out and read.

"Were you staring at Hope again?" Lizzie asked, Josie stiffening beside her as her twin called her out. She had caught her sister staring at her several times now, usually with a look on her face like she'd just seen a puppy kicked, and there had been that whole thing with her trying to suggest that Hope wasn't that bad. "What, you have a crush on her or something?"

"What? No, why would I?" Josie said, panicking as she could tell that Lizzie didn't believe her. She had to think of something to get out of this. She couldn't have Lizzie knowing about this, at best she'd hate Hope and start picking even more fights with her. And at worst she'd steal her for herself. "How could I have a crush on someone who said such mean things about my twin?"

"What?" Lizzie said, her eyes narrowing in anger while Josie seemed to freeze. Had Hope been the one spreading the rumors about her being crazy? About being bi-polar? She didn't like the girl but she hadn't thought she was the type to do that, it just didn't seem like her. "Is she the one spreading all these rumors about me?"

Josie willed herself to say no, to take back what she said. Of course it wasn't Hope, it was the other twenty people that had seen Lizzie storm out their parent's wrecked office that day. Instead though she just felt herself nod, deepening the lie she had told.

Anger rising Lizzie shot to her feet, stomping toward Hope to confront her about it. Seeing the goth coven along the way though she stopped, choosing to go about this a different way. "You wanted to know about summoning Hellfire right?" She said loudly, getting everyone in the area's attention. "Then you should ask Hope, I hear that's how her room caught fire. Apparently she tried to summon her daddy up from hell and didn't get it right."

Everything fell silent as her line hit home, and for a moment Lizzie felt that she'd made a mistake. Something in Hope's face just seemed to break, her eyes filling with pain in a way that made her regret what she'd said. Then she knew she'd made a mistake as those eyes darkened, filling with rage as the entire building began to shake. As Hope rose to her feet Lizzie honestly thought the girl was going to rip her apart, whether literally or figuratively she wasn't sure, but it was going to be messy. Instead she just walked on by, keeping her gaze focused on anything but her.

As the rumbling faded Lizzie breathed a sigh of relief, turning to see Hope heading outside. Out of the corner of her eye she caught the sight of a few drops of water on the ground along where Hope had passed. Had she been crying? She was the one who started this by telling everyone she was crazy, if she couldn't handle it then why start it. For a moment she could feel doubt creep in but she pushed it away, Josie wouldn't have lied to her. Her twin would never lie to her about something like this.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Shorter chapter this time, and the last three or four scenes bounce around more than I'd like but hopefully it's alright. I decided to skip the scene of Caroline catching up to Lizzie after her meltdown because honestly I don't know Caroline's character well enough to write it, I never watched TVD and have no intention too. Plus there's a decent chance we'll eventually get that scene in Legacies anyways.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** New chapter finally! So when I first started uploading this story I had a few chapters written and thanks to the global pandemic plenty of time to write... then I got called back to work the next day. So my writing time has been cut down severely. Still I'm trying to get these done as quickly as I can. Well I was before falling down She-Ra rabbit hole that's kept me distracted for the last week. Anyways here's another chapter and hopefully I'll have some more up before too long.

**Hanging On By A Thread**

"Hope, you out here?" Marcel asked, knowing damn well that she was. He could smell her here after all. Stepping into abandoned mill he looked around for her, able to tell she was close but not sure where. "Hope, come on."

"Give me a minute." He heard Hope call from the second floor. Sighing he leaned against one of the support beams, waiting on his niece to come down and greet him. Finally she appeared, coming running down the stairs and throwing her arms around him.

"Bout time, I was starting to get a contact high from all the fumes in here." Marcel joked, Hope laughing at that.

"It's not that bad." She retorted out of habit before taking a whiff for herself. Ok, maybe he had a point, that was pretty strong. Her wolf form must be better at filtering out unpleasant odors than she was. "And I had to get my clothes back on."

"Out for a run then?" Marcel asked, getting a nod in return. He'd heard from Caroline that it was something she'd been doing a lot of over the last month or so.

"It helps to clear my head." Hope admitted, as they walked back towards the school.

"So, being back at school not been as easy as you thought it'd be?" Marcel asked, a teasing lilt to his voice.

"Oh god, did you agree to do this just you could come say I told you so?" Hope asked, shoving the man away when he nodded.

"Hey, why else would I agree to deal with a bunch of horny vamps?" Marcel said, glad to see that whatever was bothering her didn't have her so down that she couldn't joke around with him.

"Because your secretly a giant sap and felt bad for all the teens turned into vampires?" Hope said, smirking when she saw him blink. Right on the mark with that one.

"Ok, so that might be part of it." Marcel admitted, having been a little shocked at just how many teen vamps they had here. Fortunately the youngest was at least fourteen when they were turned so he didn't feel quite the same need to hunt down their sire as if they'd been say six or eight. Still he'd asked for a list and intended to track down and find the ones responsible and see if they had decent excuse turning some of the younger ones when he had time.

"So you going to attend my big speech? You'll be a vampire one day after all." Marcel said, that having been the expert's, aka Freya and Kol, best guess. If Hope's blood could turn other's into vampires and even hybrid's then it only mad sense that once she died she'd come back as a vampire. What kind of vampire exactly was up for debate but personally he'd be disappointed if she wasn't at least as strong as he was.

"I don't plan on dying any time soon so I think I'll pass. Having the sex-ed talk twice already was more than enough." Hope said, not wanting to go through that for a third time.

"Twice? Wait let me guess, Hayley wanted to make sure the school hadn't left anything out and gave it to you herself?" Marcel asked, Hope nodding in confirmation and getting him to laugh. Of course she had.

"So yeah, you can see why I don't want to be around for a third one." Hope said, glad to have someone to just talk too. It had been nearly a month since Lizzie had gone at her in the common area, and school had sucked since then. There were all sorts of stupid rumors floating around now as apparently some people were dumb enough to believe she had really tried to summon her dad. Her relationship with Lizzie and by extension Josie was downright hostile now, on a good day the girls pretended she didn't exist and on bad ones people ran for cover.

"Fine I won't make you come then. I might decide to just compel them all into never having sex anyways, that'd be faster." Marcel joked, Hope shaking her head at that.

"I'm pretty sure you can't do that." Hope said, Marcel giving her a look as if asking if that was a challenge. "Ok, correction, you can do that but you definitely shouldn't."

"Why so concerned, got your eye on one of them?" Marcel teased, while being genuinely curious as to what the answer was.

"Hah, after my last attempt at romance with a vampire? No, I think I'll stick to flying solo for a while." Hope said, not really wanting to think about it. Not like anyone in the school would even want to date the dreaded daughter of Klaus Mikaelson anyways.

"Not too sure I believe that." Marcel said as they reached the school, vamping ahead and opening the door for Hope who just rolled her eyes at him. "I'm from the south, same as you, you know we open doors for everyone. And you're telling me there's not even someone your interested in?"

"Nope, no one. What, were you expecting me to say that some wolf had swept me off my feet? Or that I bonded with a cute witch in Charms class?" Hope taunted, glancing around the common area to make sure no one was in it. Well Wade was there but that didn't really count.

"See now I know you're teasing, Charms isn't even a real class." Marcel said, at least fifty percent sure of that. It was too bad, he'd have felt better knowing that there was someone she at least liked, that was what normal teens should be concerned about at her age.

"Yep, now come on. You got a bunch of vampires to scare into behaving." Hope said, gesturing for him to follow her. Despite what she had said she was going to stop by and watch the first few minutes of his speech at least, if only to mock him about later.

* * *

"Is this everyone?" Marcel asked, Caroline nodding that it was. Ok, show time then. "Now any of you know why you're here today?"

"Uh, you're going to tell us to say no to drugs and stay in school?" One of the vamps quipped, a few of his buddies laughing at the rather weak joke.

"See if we were outside of this school I'd be snapping your neck right now for being stupid." Marcel said, Caroline looking over at him in concern. At the back of the room he could see Hope standing by Alaric, the teen smiling at that. "In fact, I might do it anyway if you don't shut up and pay attention."

That seemed to get them to settle down and focus, "A free piece of advice for you all, never antagonize another supernatural until you know what they're capable of. I happen to be married to a woman who's made a habit of ripping the throats out of vamps who thought she'd make a pretty snack for about a thousand years. And it's always the same thing, young, dumb vampires who think they're invincible right up until their heart is being pulled out through their rib-cage."

Now he had their attention, which was what he had really wanted. Every vampire in the room had their eyes locked onto him, which meant he could do this. "Now, I want everyone here to pay attention and answer any questions I have with one hundred percent honesty for the next two hours." At the back of the room he could see Hope mouthing the word 'cheater' at him as he compelled every teen in sight to be cooperative.

It was sort of cheating, he could admit that, but it was also the easiest way to cut through the bullshit. "So as to why I'm here, that's so I can do a special vampire sex education course for you guys." Marcel said, chuckling as the expected groans swept the room. "I know, I know. Not the funnest thing in the world, but it's important if you'd like your partner to not be bled dry because you couldn't control yourself."

"To begin with you need to understand that we vampires feel everything at a heightened level. Anger, sadness, joy, and yes lust. All of it is turned up to ten times what it was when you were human. And it can be overwhelming... Marcel said, actually going into the lecture he'd wish he had gotten when he was turned. Klaus had taught him a lot of things, but restraining from killing had not even been on the list. A century plus later and a whole lot of pain, heartache, and drama he'd ended becoming a pretty decent person. Hopefully he could help these kids not have to take so long.

Smiling as she saw Marcel really hitting his stride Hope turned to leave. She would never tell the man but she was pretty sure that he'd have been able to keep their attention even without the compulsion, he was just that charismatic. The complete opposite of herself really, as she seemed to be able to force everyone away without even trying.

"Not going to stay?" Alaric said, stopping Hope as she turned to leave.

"I'd rather not. I think I'll get a shower and change, Marcel wants to go eat in town before he leaves." A shower in her own room at that, something she had happily been abusing ever since the repairs had been finished. "Tell him just to text me when he's done and I'll meet him at the common area. As I know you don't want him wondering around by himself."

* * *

Hope had finished up her classes and almost made it back to her room without incident when she had the misfortune of running into Josie. Literally, as the girl had been running down the hall and rounded the corner at the same time she had. "Ow," Hope whined as she was knocked to the floor, more out of reflex than any real pain.

"Sorry," Josie said, before looking up from where she had fallen and realizing who it was she had run into. "Hope, oh. Umm..."

Hope rolled her eyes at that, "Seriously? What you're sorry about running into someone until you see it's just me?" That wasn't fair and she knew it but she was tired of the girl avoiding her. Ever since Lizzie had decided to be extra bitchy Josie had barely said a word to her, and now it seemed like even saying something as simple as sorry was to much.

"That wasn't what I..." Josie started before trailing off, not even sure what to say. She wanted to tell Hope that it was all her fault, that she'd set the fire, drove the wedge between her sister and Hope. But she just couldn't get the words out.

"Whatever," Hope said, rolling her eyes as she got back to her feet. She started to turn to walk away before seeing Lizzie at the far end of the hallway. The sight of the blonde caused her temper to flare, spurred by the hurt of Josie not even being willing to talk with her, and she lashed out at the closest target. "Oh and next time your bitch of twin decides to throw you out to throw herself at her fling of the month, find somewhere else to stay."

"Don't talk about Lizzie like that," Josie said angrily, getting back to her feet and glaring at Hope. Crush or not she wasn't going to let Hope go after Lizzie like that, especially not in her sister's current state. She couldn't let her twin hear anything that might set her off again.

Hope almost went back at Josie, challenged her to see just what she would do, to see if she would actually fight back. It wasn't like she lacked ammunition against Lizzie either, whether it be the conspicuous absences during evenings recently, her habit of going after Josie's crushes, or just the fact that Lizzie nearly become vampire food because she'd wanted to be the first in her year to have sex.

Instead she forced her hand into a fist, digging her nails into her palm to give herself something else to focus on. She wasn't going to fight Josie out here in the middle of the hallway, especially not over something as stupid as Lizzie. Why did she care what the twins thought of her anyways, wasn't like they ever had or ever would be friends. Giving one last glare she pushed past Josie and walked off, ignoring her as she headed down the hall to her room.

* * *

"I must admit, that went better than I thought it would." Alaric said, sitting behind his desk with Marcel on the other side. Caroline had left halfway through his lecture to take Lizzie to her therapy, leaving him to wrap things up with the man.

"Be honest, how bad did you think it would be?" Marcel said, taking the drink Alaric poured for him and giving a nod in thanks.

"Honestly? I thought you might just compel them to never have sex." Alaric said, that having been the first thing that crossed his mind. Marcel wasn't an Original Vampire like the Mikaelson's were, but rather an Enhanced Original of a different variety than he had been. Compelling a bunch of teenage vampires would have been quite easy for him.

"That's funny. See, I actually suggested doing that to Hope, she said I shouldn't." Marcel said, chuckling at the thought that they'd both had the same idea.

"Don't tell me that's because she fancies one of them?" Alaric asked, not really believing that would be likely. The vampires currently enrolled in the school weren't bad, just a bit... nondescript.

"Hehe, I like you." Marcel said, taking another sip from his drink as he laughed. "I asked her the same thing, she insists there's no one."

That wasn't really surprising Alaric supposed, given that you usually needed to talk to someone to have a crush on them and Hope barely talked to anyone. Then again she'd had a thing for Roman and as far as he knew they had never spoken to one another at school so who knows. Of course Roman was part of the reason such a thing seemed so unlikely now, as most the vamps seemed to think Hope's family had killed him and were thus terrified of getting close to her.

"So, while you're being honest, how's she doing, really?" Marcel asked, setting his drink and turning to Alaric as he waited for an answer. He could ask Hope of course but he knew that all he'd get was that she was doing fine, regardless of how far from the truth that might be.

"That depends on what you're asking about. She gets excellent marks in all her classes and has recently taken up a new extracurricular activity, learning how to fight from me." Alaric said, laying out the positives first. "She also seems to be magnet for trouble, through no fault of her own, and has a grand total of zero friends."

"Yeah, that's kind of what I expected," Marcel admitted, having imagined as much.

"How come?" Alaric asked, wondering why the man had been expecting that.

"Hope wasn't exactly sociable even before and she damn sure isn't going to be now." Marcel said, knowing Hope wouldn't be happy if she heard them discussing her like this but hoping that he could find some way to help. "Knowing her she's decided that if she just keeps to herself it'll be safer for everyone."

"How do you mean?" Alaric asked, curious as to how the man saw it.

"Hayley, Klaus, Elijah, Josh, Henry... Hope blames herself for all of their deaths, thinks that if it wasn't for her than they'd still be alive." In some ways she might even be right. Henry likely would be alive if she had refused to sell him her blood, Hayley might be alive if she hadn't staged her kidnapping, Klaus might be if she hadn't taken all that dark magic back into herself. It was hard to convince her that she wasn't the reason for their deaths when she could make a pretty compelling case that she was.

"She shouldn't blame herself for all of that." Alaric said, that was just too much for any person to bear, especially a teenager.

"Oh I agree. As I'm sure would Hayley, Josh, and Elijah. Hell, Klaus pretty much told her not to blame herself before he died. Doesn't change the fact that she does." Marcel lamented, knowing Hope well enough to understand the guilt she felt. She had a self-destructive desire to live up to an impossible standard even before her family had been killed, now it seemed like she wanted to do that while completely isolating herself.

"Fact is that she does though, and I don't know what to do about that. I'd feel a lot better if she at least had some friends her own age. Someone to talk to at least." Marcel said, pouring himself another drink from the bottle on Alaric's desk.

"Well unfortunately Hope and my daughters have decided to fight with each other for no real reason that I can tell." Alaric said, letting out a sigh of disappointment. They were really the only people in the school who might be able to bond with Hope in some way, everyone else was too scared of her to even try.

"Yeah, she's mentioned that. Called them the queens of mean I believe." Marcel said with a chuckle, Hope's insults could use some work. "Maybe if she had something else to focus on outside of school that would help, a chance to do something that makes a difference."

"What, you want me to volunteer her at the soup kitchen?" Alaric said, smirking slightly at the image it conjured.

Marcel laughed a bit at that, seeing the humor in it. "No, not quite. I was thinking more that maybe there was a way she could help at the school. Teach the younger students or give tours, something along those lines."

"Huh," Alaric said as he thought it over. Giving tours was out, Caroline was still handling those and honestly Hope didn't have the personality for it. And while he thought she'd be willing to try, little kids have a way of just blurting stuff out and hitting sensitive topics, which Hope had plenty of. But there was one idea he had that might work, provided Caroline didn't kill him for suggesting it. "You know, I might actually have something that could work."

* * *

Walking around the town square of Mystic Falls with Hope Marcel couldn't help but laugh slightly. "What's so funny?" Hope asked, wondering what had amused him.

"Ah nothing, it's just hard to believe that the vampire race all originated from this small town." Marcel said, the idea just really funny to him. A thousand years of vampire history had begun here, with a single Viking family that had somehow ended up crossing the ocean hundreds of years before the Europeans would.

"So I've heard how they came here from Norway but how did they all get back to Europe?" Hope asked, having never heard that part of the story. Every story she'd heard from her family after they had fled from Mikael took place in Europe or Asia until they had arrived in New Orleans, but they had never told her how they got back.

"I asked Klaus the same thing once." Marcel said, a fond look on his face as he recalled the memory. He had still been a kid at the time, maybe Hope's age, and had been curious about the exact same thing. "He told me that they swam."

Hope stared at Marcel for a moment before bursting out in laughter, "That can't be true." There was just no way, it was thousands of miles and they would have had no way of knowing which way they were going.

"That's pretty much what I said. But I never heard any different from them." Marcel said, smiling at the incredulous look Hope was giving him.

"Next you're going to tell me that they were using sharks for food while they did so." Hope said, not sure she could believe what he was saying.

"I don't know about that. Like I also don't know how Mikael was able to follow them. Honestly I think they might have just forgotten some of this." Marcel said, understanding how it could happen. He hadn't even been around for two centuries and there were already things he had forgotten.

"I wouldn't think you could forget something like that." Hope said, looking up as she saw they were nearing their destination. They'd already had dinner, at a small Italian place that was far better than she would have thought the town would have.

"You would be surprised, Elijah told me once that he thought part of the reason they came here was because their village in Norway had burned down. But he couldn't remember how." Marcel said, following up as she led the way to where she wanted to get dessert from. "I like to think maybe a dragon was responsible."

"Dragons aren't real," Hope said, rolling her eyes as she did.

"Yeah that's what they all say. But if you look through some of the oldest grimoires there are spells in there that use stuff like dragon scales and unicorn horns. Maybe they used to exist." Marcel said, Hope stopping and turning to look at him at that.

Narrowing her eyes at him suspiciously she turned on her heel and went to the door of the Mystic Grill instead. "Nope, not commenting on that. You're just trying to trick me into admitting I've read something that Aunt Freya has locked away."

"Uh huh, are you going to pretend you haven't?" Marcel asked as he followed her into the restaurant, not having really intended for the conversation to go this way but curious to see if Hope would be honest.

"See, this is the problem with English. No matter what I say you'll still think I have." Hope said, deflecting the question. And technically speaking she hadn't read Freya's collection of locked away grimoires. She had simply used magic to copy them into books of her own in case she needed them sometime.

"Nice deflection," Marcel said, smiling at that. Letting it go he looked up at the chalkboard menu of the diner and wondered why Hope had insisted on coming here. "What was it you were insisting they had the best of? Sundaes?

"Shakes." Hope said, looking around the diner for a minute before sighing and going to the counter to place their order.

"Wait a minute, I saw that. Who were you looking for?" Marcel said, not having missed what the girl was doing.

"No one." Hope said, trying to ignore Marcel's gaze as they went to sit outside. It was nice night, spring having arrived at Mystic Falls and the perfect temperature to just be outside. Noticing the disbelieving look Marcel was giving her she relented, "Ok, fine. There's a boy that worked here, I wanted to see if he still did."

"And you told me there was no one you were interested in," Marcel said, a big grin spreading across his face. Having a thing for a human was probably a bad idea but if it meant Hope got to be a normal teenager for once he'd take it.

"It's not like that," Hope said, a small blush on her face as she did. "He's nice. And he was there on a pretty awful day. So I wanted to... I don't know, apologize for being weird?" She really didn't know what she wanted, but she had been a little disappointed that he hadn't been here.

"Ah, well why don't I found out if he's around." Marcel said, seeing a waitress bringing their shakes over. Smiling up at the teen he looked eyes with her, "Hi, would you happen to know where-?

"Landon," Hope chimed in, deciding to just go with it.

"Right, Landon. Does he still work here?" Marcel said, compelling the teenage waitress into answering.

"No. He moved a few weeks ago. No idea where." The waitress said, her eyes glassy as she responded.

"Thank you," Marcel said, before sliding her a hundred dollar bill. "And thanks for the shakes too."

As the waitress moved off her turned his attention back to Hope, the young teen trying to become the first person ever to sadly drink a milkshake. "Sorry kid," he said, before taking a sip of his own. Hope was right these were pretty good, although it needed to be mixed a little to get the whip cream off the bottom.

"It's fine. Probably for the best he doesn't get close." Hope said, pouting as she continued to sip on her shake. Landon hadn't even been the reason she had wanted to come here, she had honestly just wanted a shake. But learning that he was gone and she'd likely never see him again had put a damper on her mood.

"Don't say that." Marcel said, shaking his head at Hope. "Don't say it's for the best, like being around you is something to avoid."

"Isn't it?" Hope said, deciding that if Marcel wanted to bring this up that she wasn't going to avoid it. "How many hundreds of people are dead because of me? Or is it in the thousands already?"

"Hope, you can't blame yourself for all of that." Marcel tried, Hope just shaking her head at him.

"Oh yes I can," Hope retorted, glaring back at Marcel. "You know, I thought that if I was good enough it would be okay. If I tried my best and helped people out and didn't cause trouble then maybe I could be worth it. And then I was a stupid, selfish brat and got my mom killed."

Marcel didn't say anything to counter that, deciding to let Hope get this out. Maybe it was what she needed. But damn, watching the tears welling up in her eyes it was hard to keep from just grabbing hold of her and telling her it'd be alright. "I was almost okay with dying. I would die and take the dark magic with me, and the rest of you would be free of me. No more having to look after poor Hope or fighting whatever evil monster decided they wanted to use me next."

"I mean sure, I was scared, but at least I would have been able to be with my mom again." Hope said, her voice breaking and the tears starting to flow. At that Marcel finally gave in, moving to wrap his arms around the much smaller girl and let her cry into him. Fortunately they were the only ones outside and a hard glare was enough to send the waitress scurrying back inside as she came out to take their empty cups.

"Maybe that's why I wanted to see Landon, I wanted to see if he had missed me. Would've been sad if I had actually died." Hope said, her voice slightly muffled as she kept her face buried into Marcel's shirt. It was stupid but part of her felt that it met something that he would've missed her, that someone not from her family would have cared if she had died, even for a moment.

"Hope, you can't do this to yourself." Marcel said, moving his hand gently across her back. "Your parents wanted you to live, not spend all your time trying to live up to their sacrifice, but to have a normal life simply because they love you. Because you deserve the same chance at a normal life as everyone else."

"We're pretty far from normal." Hope said, a slight smile on her face at that. Marcel and herself were arguably the most powerful supernaturals on the planet, and certainly the most unique, normal wasn't a word that could ever be used to describe them.

"Ok, fair point," Marcel conceded, giving a slight chuckle. "But you know what I mean. You can't live your life trying to meet some impossible standard and you can't blame yourself for everything that happened around you." True, Hope had been surrounded by death since before she was ever born but it wasn't her fault, those people had made their own choices and in many cases died because of them. That wasn't on her.

"Even if you tell me that it's not like I can just stop how I feel." Hope said, wishing that it was that easy. Vampires had a way to shut off their emotions right? It was too bad there wasn't a way to shut off the guilt she felt, even thought she knew she'd never do so. "I just... I thought I was doing better but I miss them so much that it hurts. How do I move forward with that?"

"It's always going to hurt Hope, that's part of being alive. But you get through it, one day at a time. And eventually you start to remember the good times more than the bad. You hold on to those, because those are key to getting through it." Marcel said, having his own fair share of experience when it came to dealing with grief. You didn't live as long as he had without it.

"How long does it take?" Hope asked, praying that Marcel knew what he was talking about. Right now it didn't even seem possible, anytime she tried to remember her mom all she could see was her being tortured in front of her, because of her. And with her dad it wasn't like there had been an abundance of happy memories to begin with, even years later her most vivid memory was of finding him in the middle of a slaughter.

"I'll let you know when I get there," Marcel said, feeling Hope shift against him at that. He had grown to admire Hayley over the years, and loved Hope like a sister. And while his relationship with Klaus was complicated to say the least there had been a time where he had loved him like a father. Now that he was gone those memories and feelings had come back, helped in warped way by knowing that Klaus wouldn't be able to betray them anymore.

"Is it okay if we just stay here awhile?" Hope asked softly, not wanting to move yet. She had missed this more than she had imagined, just having someone to hold onto and say that it was going to be alright, the way her mom always had.

"Sure thing kid," Marcel said, adjusting in his seat to be able to wrap both arms around Hope. "I told you, anything you need and I'll be there. Whether it's to get something of the top shelf or a shoulder to cry on, all you ever need to do is ask."

* * *

"So, exactly how much trouble are you going to be in when Caroline finds out about this?" Hope asked, her feet placed on the dash of the his SUV as they drove to the middle of nowhere. Well the eastern edge of Kentucky anyways which might as well be nowhere.

"That depends on how this goes." Alaric said, keeping his eyes on the road and ignoring Hope's taunts. For someone that had been rather quick to agree to his idea she sure was enjoying pointing out the flaws in it. "She doesn't like me doing these recruitment trips solo anyways, and this way I'm not."

"Right." Hope said, drawing it out mockingly. He was so screwed when Caroline found out. Still she was going to enjoy it, any excuse to get out of the school was one she was willing to take these days. And helping recruit a newly turned werewolf might be interesting. "So how are you even sure that this isn't a wild goose chase anyways?"

"Easy, I watched the news." Alaric replied, Hope rolling her eyes at that. "A few weeks ago a hunter died up in the mountains, official reports say it was an accident when his own rifle accidentally discharged. A week later there's a story on a teenager beating two men twice his size to a pulp."

"So we're looking for a newly awakened werewolf with anger issues?" Hope asked, questioning the logic of that. Marcel had asked her to try to stay out of trouble not even a week ago when he'd been at the school and this definitely sounded like it'd be trouble.

"Well most new wolves have anger issues. But I watched the video of the fight and he didn't start it, actually looked like he tried to avoid it but couldn't." Alaric said, knowing what to look for in cases like this. He wasn't about to bring Hope with him if he thought it was a cold blooded murderer but in the video he'd seen the kid looked scared, afraid of what he had done.

"And the whole likely murdered someone bit?" Hope asked, wondering what Dr. Saltzman thought of that. It wasn't likely that he had shot the man with his own gun by accident. But well, it wasn't like she was in a place to judge either, not with her family's history.

"Well I have some ideas on that but we'll see. Main thing is to be cautious and see how it plays out, if it looks dangerous then we'll leave and I'll try again later with Caroline." Alaric said, having been through this more than once. Witches were the easiest to recruit and vampires the riskiest, with werewolves falling somewhere in between depending on whether they were part of a pack or not. Of course there weren't a lot of packs left out there nowadays.

Part of why he had decided to go ahead and do this was because it was only another two days until the full moon. If this kid was out there alone and transformed then the damage could be severe. And if he was part of pack, particularly the kind of pack that'd make him murder someone, then he'd rather get him out of there before he turned and imprinted on their alpha. It was possible to break that but it wasn't easy and made adjusting to life at the school even harder than it normally was.

* * *

"This is where they live?" Hope said, looking at the small group of RVs with disgust. She knew that werewolves tended to prefer living out in the wild, thus the reason it was a good three miles from the closest town and up in the foothills of the mountains but this was pretty bad. The RVs looked a lot more likely to be meth labs than have people actually living in them.

"Well to be precise it's where I was told that they were likely to live." Alaric clarified, taking a cautious look around the area himself. It had been a combination of things that led them to start here, the hunter's body being found within a mile of here, the waitress at the diner that said to avoid this area, the hacked police reports that mentioned problems here, and of course an abundance of wolf sightings in the last year.

"Told by who?" Hope asked curiously, not having gotten that detail yet.

"A former student who has gone on to have a career at the NSA. She helps us out with a lot of these cases, hacking into local police files to search for details or modify reports. And she seemed to think this was where they were most likely to be." Alaric said, deciding to get out of the car as he didn't see anyone moving to greet them.

"Yep, we're definitely in the right place." Hope said as she excited the Jeep, able to smell the lingering scent of werewolves in the area.

"Able to tell how many?" Alaric asked, before hearing a click of to the side. Turning slightly he saw a balding man in his fifties pointing a shotgun at him, the click having been the hammer being cocked. "Easy there, we don't want trouble."

"I doubt you could cause any." The man said before whistling, two more men coming out to see them, one from one of the RVs and the other from what looked to be a barn out back.

"Shit, what we got here?" The youngest of the two said, a string-bean of a man in overalls and no shirt.

"They were just about to tell me." The man with the shotgun said, waving it as he gestured for them to speak.

"We're from the Salvatore School. We heard rumors of what sounded like a newly awakened werewolf and wanted to offer him a chance to join." Alaric said, deciding to go with honesty for now.

"A school? We don't need no school." The third of the three men said, being shockingly fat for a werewolf and with an appearance that suggested that he could have used a lot more school.

"Yeah, we our own pack. We don't need you," The skinny one said, eyes flashing in warning for a second.

"Understood," Alaric said, keeping his voice calm and steady. "I would like to hear that from the child himself though, since we took the effort to come all the way out here."

"No." The man with the gun said shortly, "You can get in your car and leave. Have a problem with that and we kill you and take the bitch for ourselves."

Hope glared at that, about to say something before the fat one chimed in. "Should do that anyways, always wanted a bitch of my own." The expression he had on his face was what did it for her, Hope deciding she'd had enough of playing nice and summoning magic to her hands.

"Ok, screw this, _ad somnum._ "Hope said, casting the sleep spell in a wide circular area around her and Alaric. She couldn't help the smirk that came to her face they fell to the ground, the spell forcing anyone within thirty feet of her and Dr. Saltzman to sleep.

"That went well," Alaric said, Hope shaking her head at him. He had been the one to give her the contingency plan of simply putting everyone to sleep but as far as backup plans went it wasn't exactly complicated. "Why don't you see if you can find the kid and I'll take care of these idiots."

"Really? We're just going to grab the kid and run?" Hope asked, looking at the man incredulously. "Pretty sure that's the literal definition of kidnapping."

"Only if they report it." Alaric said, tossing the shotgun he took from the older man in the back of the Jeep before taking out the chains he kept in there. It wouldn't hold these morons forever but he just need to do so until they left. "And how often have you heard of a supernatural going to the police?"

"Fine, if you say so," Hope replied, moving off to do as he asked. Focusing she ignored the sound of Dr. Saltzman drilling a spike into a nearby tree to fasten the chains to and instead tried to see if she could hear anyone else nearby. A faint sound came to her ears, leading her to the shed out back where she'd seen the skinny werewolf come from.

"Hello?" Hope asked, stepping into the shed and cringing at what she saw. A scrawny kid, maybe the same height she was but looking like he might barely weigh what she did was chained to the far wall, his face bloody and scared as he looked up at her. "It's ok, we're going to get you out of here. They won't be able to hurt you again."

There was no way this kid was related to any of the idiots outside, he didn't look a thing like them. And it didn't look like he exactly believed what she was saying either. "Let's get those chains off," Hope said, raising her hand and twisting her wrist and snapping the manacles open with magic.

"What? What are you?" The kid asked slowly, looking at her with surprise and just a little bit of fear.

"I'm a witch... among other things." Hope said, giving what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "I'm from a school that exists to help people like you and me. Witches, werewolves, and vampires."

"Vampires are real too?" The kid asked, pushing his black hair out of his eyes and feeling at the wound that was still bleeding slightly. He shook his head for a moment as if clearing it before looking back over at his rescuer. "I'm Jed."

"Hope, now how about we get out of here before they wake up." Hope said, gesturing for Jed to follow her. The newly awakened werewolf hesitated for just a second, still struggling to believe this was really happening, before following her out of the shed. He still wasn't sure what was happening but anywhere had to be better than here.

* * *

Hours later and nearly back to Mystic Falls Hope finally asked the question she had been wondering about for awhile now, "Is it always like this?"

Jed had been surprisingly forthcoming on the way back before falling asleep an hour or so ago. She had been wrong and he had in fact in been related to one of the idiots, being the grandson of the older man. After his parents had died in car crash somehow the man had been able to find him, likely being notified by the state as he was his only living relative. Jed hadn't even known werewolves existed, his mother having never activated her curse as she had run away at a young age. They had literally forced him to activate his, putting the gun in his hands and making him pull the trigger before taking to beating him for trying to run away afterwards. All in all it was about as shitty a situation as Hope could have imagined finding him in.

"It depends," Alaric said with a sigh. He had seen all sorts of situation in his time since founding the school. "Wolves typically stay in packs, and want to raise their children within those packs. So if it's a situation where we're even an option it's either because they aren't part of a pack, or like today where they shouldn't be."

That made sense she supposed, as even among the Crescent Moon pack the only children to attend the Salvatore school had been her and Henry. And it wasn't exactly hard to imagine that there were plenty out there that might have the werewolf gene lying dormant within them, it wasn't like it was common for ordinary people to have killed someone.

"What about with the other species?" Hope asked, glancing back at Jed to see that he was still asleep. He had done better as they were leaving than she probably would have in his shoes. If she had been chained to a wall and beaten then she likely would have killed her captors after being freed. Jed had ignored the men though, just climbing into the Jeep and never even giving them a second glance.

"Well vampires are the trickiest. We're almost never able to find them before they've turned, so we rely on recommendations from other vampires or their families." Alaric answered, thinking back to the last few they'd accepted. One had been shot in a robbery at a gas station and a vampire that had happened to be there had turned him to save his life, the injuries being too severe for their blood to heal. Another had the bad luck to get into a club that was a vampire feeding ground and one of the vamps had gone to far and nearly killed her. The leader of that group had ended up turning her before contacting the school and arranging for the teen to attend.

"Sometimes though we learn of a vampire and it ends up being one that is already too far gone, that's when it gets dangerous." Alaric continued, having had to deal with that a few times over the years. Rippers were very common with teen vampires, and if they started feeding without anyone around to guide them it tended to end in tragedy. Caroline and himself had been forced to put down more than he'd ever admit to over the years.

"Witches tend to be the easiest, as the ones that want to attend here are typically outside of the major covens. They like the idea of a place where their children can learn and be safe but not be bound by the laws a Coven has." Alaric explained, Hope nodding at that. She knew far more than he did about how covens worked in the major cities, and knew that they would never allow one of their own to attend a school outside of their control.

"Rarely though we do find a first generation witch," Alaric said, Hope giving him a curious look at that.

"Really? Is that even a thing?" Hope asked, having thought that all witches had to be descended from one of the original covens. Of course given that those had been established thousands of years ago it was possible that most of the population had at least some connection to them.

"Well first generation is probably the wrong term. More that they're the first in a long time to show any magical ability." Alaric clarified, thinking on it some more. There had only been two admitted to the school since it had been opened, Wade and Alyssa. And they couldn't been more different. "But to answer your original question, no they're not all like this. But they are all important."

Hope nodded at that thinking on it as the rest of their trip back passed in silence. It had felt good to do this, to be able to help. She knew that Alaric probably hadn't needed her there, that he would have been fine without her, but it felt good regardless for a reason she couldn't really place. It wasn't until they had returned to the school and she was about to head back to her own room that she realized why.

"Hope," Jed called out to her as she started to walk away, getting her to stop and turn back. "Thank you. For sav-... for coming to get me." The young werewolf got out awkwardly, not sure how to express himself but needing to say something.

"You're welcome," Hope replied, a genuine smile spreading across her face. That's what it was, that feeling she'd had. It was feeling like she had actually done something that had mattered, that she'd managed to make a difference in someone's life. Sure it was a small thing, and Dr. Saltzman would have got him out there regardless but she had been able to help. "One point for me," she said softly to herself, turning to head to the school, that smile still across her face.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Hey look Landon actually got mentioned! And thus concludes Landon's entire appearance in this story. I debated stretching out Hope's first recruitment trip but it wasn't like their trip to get Raphael took that long either, other than you know the 8 or so hours in a car there and back. Side note do the people writing this show think Virginia and Georgia are close? Cause it's like 500 miles from Atlanta to Richmond. Even for Americans that's a bit of drive.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** New chapter! Blame work, life, and trying to figure out what to do with everyone's favorite bitchy brunette for this taking so long. Anyways read, enjoy, and leave some comments. 

**Hanging On By A Thread**

"So... that happened," Hope said as they left a house in the Boston suburbs. When Dr. Saltzman had asked if she wanted to help with another recruitment trip before the summer break ended she had expected something similar to what she'd seen before, not whatever that had just been.

"Not what you were expecting?" Alaric said with a smirk, climbing into the driver seat of his Jeep.

"They were dressed like Shakespeare." Hope retorted, not having any better way to describe what the Salvatore School's newest witch had been wearing.

"Yeah, that was odd."Alaric replied, staring ahead for a moment before shrugging. "Still I prefer an odd witch to hillbilly wolves or hungry vampires."

"I don't know, at least with those I can just spell them to sleep." Hope replied, leaning against the window as she settled in for the drive back to the school. She had intended to return to the school already but when Alaric had mentioned this trip she'd decided to make a detour and fly to Boston instead.

"But then we wouldn't have gotten cookies." Alaric said, smiling as Hope laughed in agreement. The family had been quite accommodating, the only reason he had even brought Hope along was because he didn't want her staying at the school by herself. "You know you didn't have to come back yet, there's another week before classes start."

"But then who would demonstrate to the Muggles that magic was real?" Hope asked with faux sincerity. She had figured that was why Dr. Saltzman had wanted her along in the first place, to cut through the doubt. "Also I thought you said first generation witches were rare?"

"They're not first generation." Alaric corrected, Hope looking at him oddly at that. He supposed that was fair, as the family had clearly not known anything about the supernatural world. "It's just that a nasty divorce means that their witch mother wasn't around. Or cared enough to tell their kid not to read spells from a sixteenth-century poet out loud."

"Was that really how you found them?" Hope asked, laughing to herself as she got a nod in response. "Wow that's... kind of pathetic? There's got to be a better way to find out about new supernaturals than that."

"If you come up with one please tell me," Alaric replied, god knows he would love to have an easier way to do this. Having to wait for a new supernatural to cause enough trouble to make the evening news was not the best way to do things but it was the only way they really had. "And don't think you've distracted me from my original question, why did you want to come back early?"

Hope glared slightly at Dr. Saltzman for pressing the point again, before sighing and answering him. "I didn't want to be in the way. Freya and Keelin are busy getting ready for the baby and it's easier on them if I'm not around."

Alaric refrained from rolling his eyes at Hope's answer, he knew damn well that she hadn't bothered discussing any of that with them before deciding to come back. A rather angry phone call from Freya wondering why he'd asked her to return early had been enough to confirm that. He would be perfectly content to have Hope stay with her family as much as possible, but it seemed the tribrid's desire to cut herself off from everyone had started to include her own family as well. "So how are they handling the pregnancy then?" Alaric asked, deciding not to push Hope on her issues for now. They had a full school year for him to do that.

"Think about how nice and balanced werewolves normally are, then add pregnancy hormones to that." Hope said, smiling as she remembered some of the funnier outbursts she'd seen. Keelin was only about four months pregnant now so it was going to get worse, she almost wished she'd be there to see it.

"Hmm, Caroline used to use those as an excuse as well. Still not too sure she even really had them." Alaric said, not exactly remembering the time fondly. With the entire history of pregnant vampires being limited to just Caroline it wasn't as if he could really refute her though.

"Right, sometimes I forget that the evil twins birth was as weird as my own." Hope said, head tilting slightly as she thought about it for a minute.

"Yeah, the three of you definitely win on weirdness." Alaric commented. A miracle baby between a thousand year old hybrid and a twenty year old werewolf who was kidnapped as she was born and brought her mother back to life versus a pair of twins magically transplanted from their dead mother into an unknowing vampire who they nearly killed by siphoning from the inside. Not a lot could compare. "See the three of you do have something in common."

"Uh huh, if the way things were before summer break is any indication the only thing we have in common is that we hate each other." Hope replied, shutting Dr. Saltzman down before he could try to convince her to give them another chance. She had tried being nice and it had blown up in her face. She was fine being by herself anyways, it was better that way.

* * *

"Oh no," Hope said under her breath, looking across the common area of the school in horror. This couldn't be happening, she had to be seeing things. Or maybe it was a spell, that made sense, they taught magic here after all.

"Hi Hope," Lizzie said with a giant grin on her face, her voice far to cheery for to be good for the young tribrid. Walking right up to her Lizzie stopped in front of her, her eyes flicking from the floor to the top of Hope's head. "Didn't see you down there."

Why? What had she done to deserve this? What had she done that was so bad that fate would have Lizzie suddenly have growth spurt over the summer and now be taller than she was? "Really? Haven't seen each other all summer and that's what you go with?"

"And what a wonderful summer it was. Just weeks of laying out on the beach in the Bahamas," Lizzie said, smiling at the way Hope rolled her eyes at her.

"Uh huh, good for you." Hope said, ignoring the girl. Lizzie was far to pale to have spent as much time on the beach as she was claiming, so clearly she was just trying to make her jealous. Why she even bothered she had no idea.

"Lizzie!" Hope heard Josie call out, seeing the other half of the Gemini twins coming over to them. Like Lizzie, Josie seemed to have had a growth spurt, being at least as tall as Hope was, if not a little taller. Josie stopped for a moment at seeing her before pushing on and going up to her sister. "I've been looking for you all over the place. Dad wants us to give a tour to a new witch."

"Umm, that's Mom's job, why do we have to do it?" Lizzie whined, not that she minded giving the tour. It was the principle of the matter.

"Yeah well, Mom is packing up to leave, something about a scouting trip in the Balkans." Josie said, delivering the bad news to her twin. Almost instantly she saw Lizzie's mood start to shift, prompting her to reach out and grab her shoulder to steady her.

Taking a deep breath, Lizzie kept herself calm, not letting the sudden news derail her good mood. "Ok, let's get this over with then. Hope, go dig a burrow or whatever it is hobbits do."

Watching as the twins left Hope started to go to her room before shrugging and deciding to follow after the twins instead. If it was the witch she had helped recruit on her most recent trip then seeing the twins reactions should be worth putting up with Lizzie for a little longer.

It wasn't the witch she had thought it would be, instead a brunette that appeared to around their age with long hair that fell in curls around her shoulders. She had been talking with Dr. Saltzman outside the main doors while she unloaded her stuff, but as the twins approached her she turned and looked them over with an almost predatory gaze. "So you're the tour guides I was promised?"

"That's right, I'm Lizzie." Lizzie replied, giving the new girl a smile as Hope stopped in the archway of the main doors and watched them interact.

"Josie, we're sisters." Josie chimed in, blushing slightly as the girl turned to her and looked her over.

"Twins actually, and clearly fraternal." Lizzie continued, as their dad took Penelope's bags and moved to take them inside. Penelope was a witch that Caroline had found and she had limited experience with the supernatural world, it would be best to let her get to know some witches her own age before he bogged her down with the rest of the registration process.

"Penelope," the girl said, before stepping forward and wrapping an arm around one of Josie's. "Now about this tour."

"Uh," Josie stuttered out as she was pulled along, not sure what to do as her sister glared at Penelope for ignoring her.

Stepping up Lizzie grabbed Penelope's other arm, "Right this way, first is the commons area." Moving towards the school she saw Hope standing in the doorway, a smirk on her face from having watched the byplay. "Scratch that, let's check out the grounds first."

"Oh? Are we avoiding someone?" Penelope asked, turning to look Hope over. A smirk appeared on her face as her eyes ran her over, the girl wasn't someone she would think needed to be avoided. "She's hot. Ex-girlfriend?"

"What?!" Josie and Lizzie shouted almost simultaneously, both looking over at each other as they did. Penelope looked between the twins for a moment before smirking even more, clearly able to tell that something had happened between the three of them. She might've been off with her guess but it didn't seem to be by that much.

"No, never. Hope's just... would saying she's a walking pit of misery and despair be too much?" Lizzie said as she recovered first, answering for both of them.

"She's not that bad," Josie countered getting a glare from Lizzie at that. "But she isn't exactly friendly either."

"Understatement of the year." Lizzie added, pulling Penelope, and by extension Josie, further from said unfriendly teen. "Trust us, you're better off staying far away from her. No matter how hot she is."

* * *

"You've gotten sloppy," Alaric commented, throwing a high kick at Hope that made her fall over while trying to dodge. Glaring at the man from the ground near the lake she swept out with one hand, coming nowhere near connecting with him but sending him to the ground none the less. "Cheater..."

"I might not have had much of a chance to keep up with training but that doesn't mean I didn't pick up any new tricks." Hope commented, getting back on her feet before helping Alaric up to his. She had been pretty good at basic non-verbal spells before but over the summer she had worked on them with Freya until they were now second nature.

"It's not exactly sporting," Alaric said, rubbing his sore backside.

"Sporting? Seriously?" Hope remarked, finding the very idea laughable. In any real fight she was going to start with magic and then use her physical skills only if necessary. There was no need for her to be sporting.

"Yeah, not really a thing is it?" Alaric admitted, trying to remember if he had ever been in a fight that was "fair." The answer was almost certainly no, there wasn't really such a thing as fair when it came to supernaturals, one side always had an advantage. And if you didn't have a natural advantage then you needed to create one through whatever means necessary. "That being said, no magic while sparing. You won't learn anything that way."

"Fine," Hope conceded. It wasn't like she intended to use it anyways, she had only done so this time to make a point. If anything she needed the physical exertion, she had been feeling antsy all day and couldn't figure out why.

"I think we have to call it here for the day though, I have to get back to the school and get ready for tonight." Alaric said, not all that thrilled about needing to cut things short. He had been late getting out here as he was stuck talking to one of the new student's parents and now he had to leave after barely fifteen minutes of sparring.

"What's tonight?" Hope asked, not knowing what the man would need to prepare for. Classes didn't even start back for another week and there were maybe thirty students on campus at the moment.

"It's a full moon tonight," Alaric answered, smiling a bit as he saw Hope remember. She didn't have to transform like a regular werewolf would but he thought she'd be more aware than that.

"That's why I've been so jittery..." Hope muttered, annoyed at having forgotten. While back in New Orleans it hadn't been something she'd paid attention to at all. With Keelin being pregnant she couldn't shift and there had been enough going on around her to not notice the extra energy. Here at school though there just wasn't enough to keep her occupied. "Need any help?"

Alaric just stared at her for a minute, wondering if he was hearing right. Hope Mikaelson volunteering to do anything related to other students? He might need to have Dorian check if that was a sign of an apocalypse. "...you know what? Sure, why not."

* * *

When she had volunteered to help she hadn't thought about what she would actually be doing, just wanting something to keep herself busy. Turns out there wasn't really that much to do. There were only four werewolves on campus at the moment and they were all familiar with what to do. Go down to their individual transition rooms, wait for someone(Hope this time) to cast a screening spell to give them some privacy, and change out of their clothes and into a robe to await the full moon. Not much to it.

"There's not as much to this as I thought." Hope commented idly, getting a soft chuckle from the lone female werewolf whose clothes she was waiting to take. Kourtney was an attractive girl with dark skin and light brown hair that she usually had pulled into tight braids. Tonight though she let it fall loose around her, the natural curls stopping just above her shoulders.

"It's meant to be simple. Keeps things from going sideways." Kourtney commented, getting a slight nod from Hope in understanding. "It's too bad Javier graduated though, if he had been here Dr. Saltzman might let us have the night out."

"That's happened?" Hope asked, having never heard of it. It seemed like too great a risk for the school to take.

"Only in the summer, when there's so few of us here and the alpha could keep control. Javier was good at it, had a stronger grasp of his senses when transformed and kept us out of anywhere that would be trouble. It'll be hard to replace him." Kourtney said, an almost wistful sigh escaping her. Javier was by no means perfect but he had been a good alpha for the school pack.

"Oh right, he graduated," Hope said after a moment. It was hard to imagine the brute that had tried to force her to join the pack being a good alpha but apparently that was the case. Hell Kourtney had been one of the ones that attacked her on his orders and here she was having a civil conversation with her. "So who's going to replace him? You?"

"Oh hell no. I don't want that. I don't even like being in a pack, but I'm not as strong as you are." Kourtney said, watching as Hope squirmed uncomfortably at that. It was hard to imagine that the girl in front of her was the same one that had beaten Javier to a pulp months earlier. She had been legitimately afraid of her then, but now she couldn't feel any reason to be so. "There's a few that'll try but my money's on that new wolf, Jed."

"Jed? Seriously?" Hope asked, glancing over at the ~~cell~~ transition chamber he was in, despite knowing she wouldn't be able to see into it. True. the wolf seemed to have eaten whatever magic food the twins had found and suddenly grown a good five inches over the summer and had definitely filled out, but it was hard to imagine him being able to becoming the alpha.

"Javier took a liking to him, was grooming him to be the next alpha. And the rest of the pack is pretty young, so he has a shot." Kourtney elaborated, filling Hope in. There were only three wolves that were really older than Jed; herself, Brian who couldn't fight to save his life, and Cho who could fight but was severely outclassed in size and strength. "Unless of course you want to be alpha."

"Not happening," Hope replied immediately, having no desire to do so. If Jed wanted the title than let him have it, having an alpha that didn't want to do it would only hurt the pack.

"Too bad, I would've liked to have seen what you would have come up with for the talent show." Kourtney replied, a smile on her face at the idea. Hope actually laughed at that, before a sudden jolt seemed to run through the room. "Looks like the moon's coming up, you should leave before it does. Transformation isn't pleasant to be around."

"Right," Hope replied, taking the clothes Kourtney passed through the bars and placing them on a bench outside where they wouldn't get torn apart. "Good... luck I guess?" What exactly did you say to someone who was about to have every bone in their body broken and put back together?

"Thanks Hope, if you ever find a way to not have this hurt so much let me know. God knows I could use it." Kourtney replied, turning away from the door and walking to the center of the room, thus missing the look on Hope's face.

Leaving the cells Hope couldn't keep Kourtney's words out of her head. She did actually know a way to take away the pain of being forced to transform, but it was by doing something she had sworn to never do again. By turning a werewolf into a hybrid. Shaking her head to clear it of her thoughts she realized her feet had led her to main doors without her noticing. Deciding she needed a more effective way to clear her head she headed out, after all it would be a shame not to embrace her werewolf side on such a night.

* * *

"You don't look German," Lizzie said, voicing her opinion as she with her back against her bed, her sister and Penelope seated on the floor of the twins' bedroom as well. With tonight being a full moon they were confined to their rooms and Josie had suggested they have the new girl stay with them as it wouldn't be right to have her be alone her first night at the school.

"Oh? And what do German's look like?" Penelope asked, a smirk on her face as she did.

"Umm... blonde, I guess." Lizzie managed to come up with, not having actually met any Germans before. At least not as far as she knew.

"So like you," Penelope replied, her ever present smirk seeming to widen as Josie laughed from beside her. "They're not all blonde, or lack humor, or whatever other dumb stereotype you're thinking of."

Lizzie didn't really know how to reply to that. The Salvatore School did a great job of integrating all three species, and was very accepting when it came to things like sexuality but they did not have a lot of international students. Her mom had been talking about wanting to find more over the summer but Penelope was the first such student to actually attend.

"Besides, I didn't say I was all German. My Dad was Indonesian, and a witch. I got my magic from him." Penelope continued, leaning back against Josie's bed as she got comfortable.

"So your Mom isn't a witch?" Josie asked, curious about the new girl. She was so much more at ease than she would have been in the same situation. Whereas she had a hard time doing anything that put her in the spotlight Penelope seemed perfectly at ease with all the attention she was getting.

"Nope, she's an accountant. I pretty much taught myself magic after my Dad died but she wanted me to have more structure if I kept at it so here I am." Penelope said, gesturing around to the room before shrugging. "It'll do I guess."

"Oh it'll do alright. The Salvatore School offers an unmatched magical education. And is the only school to have all three species intermingled." Lizzie chimed in, quoting the lines she'd heard her mom use while giving tours.

"So what's that like, the species thing? Because I didn't even know werewolves or vampires were a thing." Penelope admitted, eyes shining with curiosity. Her mom was accepting of her desire to learn magic but it wasn't easy to learn about the supernatural community if you were outside of it, especially when you moved as much as they had.

"Well it's-" Josie started, before being cut off by Lizzie.

"A pain in the ass. Like seriously, every month we have to lock down just to make sure no one gets eaten by a werewolf." Lizzie ranted, missing the pout Josie had at being interrupted. "They're all locked up anyways, unless one of them figures out how to dig a hole through concrete we're not in any danger. It's ridiculous."

"So what do they look like? Is it like in the movies?" Penelope asked, letting the part about being eaten go as her curiosity took hold. They wouldn't have them transform at the school if it was really that much of a risk, right?

"No, not at all." Josie said quickly, not wanting her sister to steal the spotlight again. "They look just like normal wolves."

"Big wolves. Hope was like twice the size of a normal one." Lizzie added, remembering her encounter with the tribrid. She hadn't even thought of it at the time but it was the first time she'd seen a transformed werewolf in person.

"Hope's the girl from earlier right? So she's a werewolf?" Penelope asked, still curious about the girl and how the twins had reacted to her. Maybe there was some witch versus werewolf thing she didn't know about.

"Kind of." Josie answered, Penelope quirking an eyebrow to her at that. How was one 'kind of' a werewolf? "Hope's a tribrid. Part witch, part werewolf, and part vampire."

"That's a thing?" Penelope said, not really knowing if that was supposed to be something special or not. The brochure for the school hadn't said anything about tribrids at least.

"Ugh, no. No. We are not spending out night talking about Hope." Lizzie whined, wanting to talk about literally anything else.

"Why not? She sounds interesting." Penelope said, enjoying the fact that it seemed to annoy Lizzie.

"Trust me, you'll be sick of hearing about Hope and the rest of the Mikaelsons once classes start and you have to write papers on them." Lizzie countered, an annoyed look on her face. She knew the Mikaelson's were pretty important to the history of the supernatural world but it didn't make having to write about them any easier.

"Mikaelson? Is that her family?" Penelope asked, rolling the name over in her head. She wasn't sure but she thought she'd seen it one of her Dad's grimoires.

"You really don't know who the Mikaelsons are?" Josie asked, kind of shocked at that. The Mikaelsons were the most infamous family in the supernatural world, everyone knew about them. Even plenty of non-supernaturals would recognize the name as it showed up in fairy tales and such fairly often. Always as the villain of course.

"Are they like the royals of supernatural world or something?" Penelope asked, causing Lizzie to dry heave at the very thought.

"Try the exact opposite. They're the great evil of our world, and I mean that literally, that's what Hope's dad is actually called in our history books. And it's not like rest of the family was any better. She's dangerous." Lizzie shared, giving Penelope the shortened version.

"Everyone at this school is dangerous, us included." Josie said, defending Hope slightly. Her and Hope might not be friends but there was no reason to be talking about her like this. She had never done anything to hurt them.

"Whatever. Didn't I say I didn't want to spend all night talking about Hope?" Lizzie said before turning and fishing under the bed for something. Pulling out a half empty bottle of wine from under the bed she held it up. "How about we do something more fun instead?"

* * *

"This is becoming a problem Rick." Sheriff Matt Donovan said, kneeling in front of the two recently deceased vampires in the city park. He had spotted them in town earlier, recognizing the daylight rings they had, and from there it had been a simple case of offering them bait and seeing if they would take it.

"We handled it, didn't we?" The bait said, pointing out the positive aspect first. A small cut to his leg had been enough to lure them out, and the first had fallen to his stake before he realized that Alaric was armed. The second had been stupid enough to let Donovan shoot him, never considering that the bullets in the sheriffs gun were filled with wood specifically to kill vampires.

"Yeah, just like we did the last time, and the time before that. This is the fourth time in three months Rick. That's a problem." Sheriff Donovan pointed out, knowing that Alaric knew so as well. Caroline had managed to talk one pair of vampires into leaving but the rest had all been slain after being baited into attacking what they thought was an easy target.

"What do you want us to do? Put up a sign that says No Vampires Allowed?" Alaric asked, honestly wanting to know if the man had any ideas. The vampires Caroline had talked with had just wanted to see the place their race had begun and had been willing to behave while here. The rest he assumed had been here for similar reasons but he hadn't got a chance to ask before things turned violent.

"You know what, if you think it'll work then sure. It's better than nothing." Matt countered, getting an eye roll from Rick. "Isn't there a spell or something you can do to keep them out?"

"No, a spell of that magnitude is too much," Alaric replied. There had been such a spell in the past but it wasn't the kind they could easily replicate. "Maybe we can work out some sort of magical warning spell, let them know that they're not welcome and that we can find them."

"That might wor-" Matt started before catching sight of something moving in the dark behind Rick. As the figure blurred forward he tried to get his gun up, shouting out a warning, "Rick!"

Turning Alaric saw the woman speeding toward him, arms outstretched to rip out his throat. Even while his body moved on instinct and tried to get his stake up to counter he knew he wouldn't be able to before the vampire reached him. Just before she did though a gray blur came flying into his view, crashing into the vampire from the side and knocking her to the ground.

* * *

Hope had been out running for hours by now, simply enjoying the freedom her wolf form offered. At least until the wind shifted and carried two very familiar scents out to her, Dr. Saltzman and blood. Turning she ran towards the scents as quickly as her four legs could carry her, taking in everything she could.

There were at least three other scents there, one she vaguely remembered smelling before, something that she hoped meant it was a friend and two others that were unfamiliar. As she drew closer though she could tell that those scents belonged to vampires, and that the blood she could smell was tinted with the same smell.

Fortunately the park was rather close to the school grounds, which honestly seemed to just be asking for trouble. But in this case she was grateful for it as it meant she was able to get there quicker, especially as a fifth scent hit her. Another vampire, one that was still alive.

Soon she was able to actually see the two men, Dr. Saltzman and another that she recognized as the sheriff, the man having come by the school a few times. And coming up behind Dr. Saltzman was the vampire she had smelled, clearly going in for the kill.

Not hesitating she flung herself at the vampire, just barely reaching her before she reached Dr. Saltzman. Fangs widening she latched onto the vampire's outstretched arm with her teeth, clamping down on it as her momentum sent them both to the ground. Going on instinct she bit down on the arm, tearing through the bone with a vicious crunch before twisting her head to rip the limb clean off in a spray of blood.

The woman screamed at that, lashing out wildly with kicks that pushed Hope off of her before scrambling back to her feet and turning to run for her life. The sight of her turning to flee seemed to trigger some instinct in Hope, the tribrid moving to go after her, growling as the vampire started to pick up speed to escape.

Not willing to let her prey get away Hope channeled her magic through her tail, using it as medium to cast a spell in way she hadn't even known was possible. The magic ripped out from her, invisible claws tearing into the fleeing vampire's legs and shredding the muscles there. A vampire's speed and strength might come from the magic that kept them alive but it still needed to be channeled through the proper muscles, and with those now destroyed she couldn't run.

Turning as she fell the vampire managed to face Hope just as she leapt for her, fighting back as best she could with only one arm. Blood ran down the teen's side but it was all for naught as her fangs finally reached the woman's throat. "Ple-," the vampire barely managed to get out before Hope's fangs clamped shut, ripping the woman's throat out and leaving her to choke on her last plea.

* * *

"Hope?" Alaric managed to get out finally, still trying to process the events of the last few seconds. That was all it had taken, maybe twenty seconds between thinking he was about to have a vampire take his head off and seeing a werewolf that had to be Hope ripping her throat out instead. Thinking quickly he shrugged off the outer button down shirt he was wearing, approaching the still transformed Hope cautiously. "Hope."

Turing Hope saw Dr. Saltzman approaching, almost starting to growl before seeing the shirt he held out. Realizing what he wanted, she turned back, forcing herself to shift back to human as she felt Dr. Saltzman drape the shirt around her shoulders to give her some coverage.

Glancing back at Donovan, Alaric gestured to Hope and then to where his Jeep was parked, nodding in thanks as he saw the man move that way. There was at least a blanket in there that he could give Hope, and it would give her a few minutes with just him to process what had just happened.

Glancing around the park he winced at how much blood there was and considered that he might need a minute too. Most of it was from the vampires but given the gashes in Hope's side that were still healing a fair amount of it was hers as well. And the girl herself was covered in it, blood dying her mouth and throat and already staining through the shirt he'd lent her in multiple places.

Standing beside the young girl Alaric sighed, placing a hand on her shoulder than Hope didn't even seem to notice. Her eyes were locked on to the vampire she had just killed, the shock of what she had done setting in. "Thank you," Alaric said, getting Hope to stir and turn to look up at him. "You saved my life. My girls will still have a father thanks to you."

That wasn't entirely true of course. Donovan and himself might well have been able to fight off the vampire even if Hope hadn't shown up, and even if they couldn't he wasn't out of tricks. But it was what Hope needed to hear. That what she had done had saved someone, and there was enough truth to it that he didn't feel the least bit conflicted about it.

"I only meant to stop her. But then she ran, and I..." Trailing off Hope's gaze returned to the vampire she'd slain. The moment she'd turn to run her instinct had taken over, to the point she couldn't hold herself back. She had wanted to kill, to rip her apart, and she had. "I enjoyed it."

"No, you didn't." Alaric corrected immediately, feeling Hope jolt in surprise at how quick his rebuttal had been. "Hope I've seen plenty of werewolves, vampires, witches, and humans that enjoyed killing. You are not one of them."

"But I-" Hope started, before shutting down. She didn't even know what she was trying to argue.

"The animalistic side that takes priority while transformed might have wanted to kill. But that doesn't mean it's you. If you had really enjoyed it then you wouldn't be crying." Alaric pointed out, Hope reaching up to feel at her eyes in surprise, having not even noticed the tears forming.

A transformed werewolf was dangerous, even one that had as much control as Hope, because they were guided so strongly by instinct. If they smelled something new they would quickly move from being curious as to what it was to needing to know, if they had to fight it didn't take long to go from hurting their opponent to killing them. And if something happened to truly trigger their predatory instincts then almost nothing could pull them back, they would hunt down and slaughter whatever their target was.

That didn't mean that they were monsters though, no more than any supernatural at least. He had long believed that part of what made humans different from animals was their ability to go against what their instincts or desires might tell them to do. And werewolves were no different, it was just that while transformed they lost almost all ability to restrain themselves. It came with time for most but for all of Hope's talent and abilities she had only been able to transform for a few months. The only reason he was willing to allow her to transform as freely as she did was because he was certain that as long as no one forced her to fight then she wouldn't be dangerous. And so far she hadn't been.

Hope didn't say anything, just focusing on her breathing as she felt a tear slowly fall down her face. She knew what Dr. Saltzman was saying, it was all things she'd heard before. At school, from her mom, from Keelin, even from her Dad. But it was different feeling it. The desire to kill had been so strong, even stronger than what she'd felt at her mom's wake, or at the church, and she hadn't been able to stop herself. And that scared her. "What if-" Hope started, before a blanket fell on top of her.

"There you go kid." Sheriff Donovan said, laughing softly as Hope pulled the blanket off from where he had dropped it and instead wrapping it around her as she stood up. "Hope, right? Thanks for the help. I did not want to have to tell Rick's girls their Dad got eaten because he got slow."

"Slow my ass. You were the one who said there were only two vamps." Alaric countered, glaring at the man slightly. If wasn't like they hadn't taken precautions, the same silver totem he had used to detect approaching supernaturals while training Hope was placed on the bench beside where he been sitting for instance, but they hadn't been paying attention to it once they thought they'd eliminated the threat.

"I said I saw two vampires, never said there were only two." Matt pointed out, getting an eye roll from Rick. Glancing around the area he sighed at the amount of work this was going to be to clean up, the two he and Rick had killed would be fairly simple but the third was a mess. "You should get out of here, I'll take care of cleaning this up."

"Thanks Matt," Alaric said, placing a hand on Hope's shoulder and guiding her to the car. Thankfully she went with it, wanting to be gone from there as much as he did. Part of him wanted to stop and let her at least wipe the blood off, but as Hope demurely climbed into the passenger seat of his Jeep, never saying a word the whole time, he decided it was best just to get back.

Then short drive back to the school passed in silence, Hope just leaning her head against the window, gazing out at nothing. He would have her speak with Emma tomorrow, which was honestly something she should've been doing since returning to the school. For now though there was nothing he could do, nothing he could say to make things better for her. Hope was strong enough to handle what she had done, he knew that, but god he wished that she didn't have to be.

* * *

Hope had never been so grateful to have her own bathroom and shower as she was now. She hadn't realized just how much blood she had been covered in until she actually started cleaning it off. It had gotten everywhere. The idea of someone walking in and seeing her like that, or finding bloodstains in the shower the next morning, was not something she wanted to deal with.

The hot water from the shower was helping her calm down as well, letting her process what had happened. It wasn't as if it was the first time she had killed of course, but the other times hadn't been so violent. The first time had been at her Mom's wake, and the rage that had fueled her there had driven away any remorse she might have felt. Then with the massacre at the church her Dad and Marcel had been there and she'd been so focused on keeping the dark magic at bay that she hadn't let herself dwell on it. The things she had done were still horrible but she had never had to face them like this.

There had just been so much blood. And the screams. The woman had been trying to beg for her life when she'd killed her. And she hadn't cared, hadn't even hesitated. Every member of her family had told her that she couldn't hesitate in a real fight, that if someone came after her life then she couldn't hold back. So she hadn't, and now she felt like shit because of it.

"I saved Dr. Saltzman, that's what matters." Hope told herself softly, trying to convince herself of that. It was easier said than done. Take one life to save another, tell yourself the life you saved was worth more. She wasn't anywhere near naive enough to believe it was really that simple, but she was willing to pretend.

_"My girls will still have a father thanks to you,"_ Dr. Saltzman's words echoed in her mind, reminding her of that. Josie and Lizzie wouldn't have to go through the same pain she had, the pain of losing a parent. That was worth it. She didn't like the twins but she would never wish that on anyone. And if she could prevent them from ever knowing what that was like then she would.

A part of her wanted to know how the twins would react if they knew she'd saved their dad's life. Lizzie would ~~probably~~ definitely be a brat about it, try to pretend like it wasn't a big deal or that she was just trying to show off. Josie would be kinder, thank her for saving her dad, maybe even hug her. _'Heh, maybe we could actually become friends,'_ Hope thought idly, a small smile on her face at the thought.

That would never happen though, because she would never let them find out. The twins were probably asleep by now, with no idea of what had occurred that night. They didn't need to know how close they came to losing their father. They had what she had always wanted, a normal life with parents that loved her and were there for her, she wasn't going to shatter that image for them.

* * *

**Author's Note:** It was never fair that Hope was the only Mikaelson not to have eaten someone so I just had to fix that, and hey her wolf form finally got to do something. Her werewolf side is severely underused in the series, and used pretty much only for sex related reasons in a lot of fics, so I wanted to fix that. The being able to use magic while transformed makes sense to me and will get addressed more later. As for Penelope, she's kinda hard to write for this fic, as her character was really just loves Josie, hates Lizzie, and is a bitch. And two of those don't apply yet. Developing and then destroying her relationship with the twins should be fun though. Figuring out how she interacts with Hope is harder, they had like 3 scenes together all series. Glad to have finally gotten this done though, no idea when the next chapter will be, but hopefully it wont take as long as this one did. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:** When I last updated this I did not think it would be nearly six months before my next update. Of course it's not like I didn't write anything during that time, I wrote a lot of things actually, you should check them out. But it did take longer than I wanted. On the bright side, it is the longest chapter so far, so there's plenty to read. So read, enjoy, and let me know what you think.

**Hanging On By A Thread**

"Ugh, why is this so hard..." Hope said barely resisting the urge to slam her face into the book she had been reading. After the close call with the vampires a month ago she had been trying to come up with a spell that could serve as warning system against vampires but it was proving much more difficult than she had imagined it would be. The problem she kept running into was the energy cost, the amount required to power a spell that could cover the entire town and be sustained was just too much.

Letting out another groan Hope let her face fall into the book for a moment, frustrated at how little progress she'd made. She had honestly thought she'd be able to figure it out fairly quickly, and in a way she had. She had the structure of the spell worked out, and was rather proud of what she had come up with, but powering it was proving more difficult.

Oh sure, she could cast it, but keeping it powered constantly was another story unless she wanted to just link it to herself. And that was a terrible idea for a whole variety of reasons, not the least being that she wouldn't be able to leave the boundaries of the spell without it breaking then.

"Bad day?" Someone asked from above her, Hope looking up to see Dorian standing near the table she was at, an amused smile on his face. "Or does that book just make a good pillow?"

"Neither. Just can't figure out this spell," Hope said, sitting up straight in her chair, slightly embarrassed at how she had been acting. At least there wasn't anyone in the library to actually see her besides Dorian.

"Well, how about I have a look? Maybe another perspective will help," Dorian offered, taking a seat across from Hope. As Hope passed him her notes he let out a low whistle in appreciation, the spell she had come up with was a thing of beauty. "This is for that project Crowett has her class working on isn't it?"

That had been Dr. Saltzman's solution to finding a way to create a vampire detection spell, outsource it to the witch students at the school, in particular Mrs. Crowett's Spellcrafting class. He had of course reached out to the various witches that were friends of the school as well but there was no harm in letting the students try as well. In particular when one certain student knew the reason for needing the spell already and would have been trying to create one anyways. "So the spell design works, but I can't figure out how to power it. The area it needs to cover is just too large."

"Hmm," Dorian hummed, looking at he arrays Hope had drawn out. He was no witch but he had studied more about magic than probably any human alive, he knew the theory as well as anyone. And as he wasn't a witch he didn't have the unavoidable biases witches did when it came to spell crafting. "You're looking at this the wrong way."

"How do you mean?" Hope asked, looking over at her notes and trying to see whatever Dorian had noticed. The point of the spell was to warn them if vampires where in the town and give them an incentive to stay out, the spell she created accomplished both of those goals.

"You're treating this as if you need the spell to be a fortress, a solid impenetrable barrier that covers the town. All we really need though is a boundary," Dorian said, taking a pen and drawing a large circle around the perimeter. Seeing Hope focused on what he was saying he continued, drawing a series of smaller circles on top of the original large one to show what he meant. "You see, we take your spell and instead of covering the whole town we just trace around the outside, encircling the area we need. Not a single spell surrounding the town but dozens of smaller ones, each overlapping to leave no gaps and form a composite that does the job of the larger circle while each being able to be charged separately."

Setting the pen down he leaned back in his chair, "Of course that isn't without trade-offs. It'll be far narrower, maybe a fifty-feet wide and not going too high, but will still enclose the town. And any vampire that crosses over would trigger it, alerting us to their presence, which is all we really need. A fence, not a fortress."

"That... how did I miss that?" Hope said, not sure how she couldn't see that. She had been so focused on covering the entire town that she had never considered simply creating a perimeter around it. Hell if they laid it out right then it could be used to pinpoint where it was breached as well. And with it only being along the perimeter she didn't need to create as strong a loophole for the vampires at the school to remain inside.

"That should reduce the power consumption enough to make it possible. Each component will need to be charged separately but they're small enough for that to be viable." That would likely become a recurring assignment for the witches at the school. Depending on the final design they would likely only need to be recharged every few months, and doing so would be a nice practical lessons for the students.

Hope looked over the notes once more, trying to see if there were any flaws in what they had come up with. She'd need to tweak the spell a bit so that she could overlap them, and then sit down with Dr. Saltzman and a town map to figure out what route the perimeter needed to follow. But it would work. "Thanks Dorian," Hope said, gathering up her stuff to leave.

When she had first started struggling she had considered contacting her family for advice. Between Freya, Vincent, Davina, and Kol she had no shortage of family to ask. Even Rebekah knew a surprising amount about witchcraft. But she hadn't wanted to. She had wanted to figure this out on her own. And she had. She had created her own barrier spell without needing to use the cheat code that her family was. As dumb as it was that put a smile on her face as she headed out of the library doors.

* * *

Her good mood didn't get to last that long, or very far even. She had barely made it down the hallway before she was nearly knocked down by a werewolf being flung into the wall in front of her. Stopping she turned and glared down the connecting hallway the werewolf had been thrown from, where she could see Jed. The young werewolf was panting heavily, with one hand held gingerly to his side and had a nice bruise setting in over his left eye. "Seriously?"

"You gonna stay down?" Jed asked, ignoring Hope as he focused on his opponent. For the last three weeks he had been cementing his status as alpha, by taking on all challengers, at all times, and winning.

"Fuck you," came the response from the downed werewolf. Jed's opponent was a boy roughly the same age as him, with curly dirty blonde hair, who had just started at the school and didn't seem inclined to stop fighting anytime soon. Pushing himself to his feet he got ready to charge, only to have Hope step in between the two wolves.

"That's enough. Take the pissing contest outside," Hope said, looking between the two wolves but focusing her glare at Jed, he knew better. They had already attracted a crowd around them, a few younger wolves, a couple of witches that had just started here, and at least one vampire who took one look at what was going on and vamped away. That was good, the last thing they needed was a vampire going into a frenzy over a split lip or busted nose.

"Fuck off bitch," the wolf behind her said, shoving Hope out his way to continue his fight with Jed. At least that was what he intended to have happen, instead he found his wrist caught in a vice like grip as Hope turned and grabbed it. Glaring, his eyes glowed yellow as he went to take a swing at Hope while trying to rip his hand free. That ended up being a mistake.

There was a sudden loud snap, followed by a scream as the werewolf fell to his knees, his right wrist still in Hope's grasp. And now also bent violently the wrong way from her breaking it the instant he tried to attack her. "I said to take it outside," Hope said, her own eyes glowing gold as she glared at the downed werewolf before shifting her gaze to Jed. "Understood?"

Jed took a step back out reflex before steeling himself and nodding. Hope was right they couldn't do this in the hallways of the school, there was too much that could go wrong. "Understood."

"Good boy," Hope said, condescension clear in her voice as she finally released the werewolf's wrist and left him sobbing on the floor. She actually rolled her eyes at the sight, it was just a broken wrist, they didn't hurt that bad. And he'd be healed in a couple of days at worst. Turning she made to leave, ignoring the looks she was getting before stopping near Jed. "Congratulations on becoming alpha. Now keep your pack in line. And away from me."

Jed could only nod dully at that, not wanting to even say anything lest he piss her off more. He had heard about what had happened when Javier had tried to force Hope to join before, from the man himself, and had no intention of repeating that mistake. Besides while Hope didn't seem to care, he hadn't forgotten her role in bringing him to the Salvatore School, he owed her. Even if she was far less friendly and much more intimidating than she had been when they had met for some reason.

* * *

"You hear about the fight yet?" Penelope said as she set down in the cafeteria, straddling the bench seats as she leaned over to Josie, her eyes shining at the chance to gossip.

"No, what happened?" Josie asked, turning to look at Penelope. How the girl seemed to already be so in tune with the gossip machine at the school she had no idea, she was worse than Lizzie.

"Let me guess, another wolf with more muscles than brains got his ass kicked challenging Jed?" Lizzie chimed in, setting her food on the table as she walked up. The stupid alpha fights had been going on for weeks, and so far Jed had won all of them. By now that barely counted as news.

"Half right. But then Brodie took a swing at Hope," Penelope said, both twins turning and giving her their full attention at that. "Next thing I saw he's on the floor screaming and his wrist now goes sideways."

"Sounds like Hope," Lizzie said, shrugging and turning her attention to her lunch while Josie nodded in agreement. She had seen what Hope could do in a fight, why anyone thought it was a good idea to attack her she didn't know. Even she wasn't that crazy.

"Really? I just told you Hope broke a guy's wrist and you don't seem to care?" Penelope said, unsure how to take that. She had kind of gotten used to the werewolves fighting but those only ended in some nasty bruises at most. Hope had casually snapped a guy's wrist in two and yet neither of the girls in front of her considered it worth noting.

"Sorry, it's just... you get used to these things after a while," Josie said, picking up on what Penelope was saying. She had mostly gone to private schools before coming here, the worst fight Penelope had probably seen in person likely ended with a busted nose. Most of the students that went here had seen much worse by the time they were ten. Some had even been the cause of it.

"Seriously, you get used to it," Lizzie said, words distorted by a mouthful of jello as she had decided to have desert first. Swallowing she pointed to a spot across the room, "Mom broke Christa's neck right over there about this time last year. It happens."

Penelope's eyes went wide at that, looking at the spot and wondering what the hell had happened. "Christa's a vampire. Kaylee's nose had started bleeding and Christa could barely control herself. Mom stopped her before she could hurt anyone," Josie said, filling in the details her sister hadn't bothered with.

Penelope had to remind herself that this was her new life, and one she had wanted. There was just a bit of culture shock. Simply reading about the violence supernaturals commonly were a part of was nothing like actually seeing it. If someone had done what Hope had in one of her former schools there would have been suspensions, meetings with parents, and possibly police involvement. Here that was just a Tuesday morning... well Thursday but the point stood.

"Ignoring the boring gossip, did you hear about Alyssa's latest blowup?" Lizzie said, smiling as she remembered seeing the girl being pulled into her dad's office earlier that day. "Rumor is she was crushing on Jake and he rejected her, then she goes nuts and tried to stake him with a pencil."

"It was a mechanical pencil Lizzie. It wouldn't have worked," Josie added, getting Lizzie to roll her eyes at that.

"Whatever. All I know is that he has a pencil through his hand and she has detention for at least a week," Lizzie said, just happy the witch would be gone for awhile. At least Hope wouldn't actually curse her when they got into it, Alyssa had no such restraints and her spells had only gotten nastier as they got older.

* * *

"I'm glad I came to you before just trying to map this out myself." Hope said, looking at the map she had drawn with Dr. Saltzman's input. The town wasn't exactly laid out in a nice simple square that could easily be fenced off, it bent and turned, banking the river that the waterfall it was named for flowed in to. Add in the considerably large school grounds and you ended up with a perimeter close to twenty miles long that her spell needed to cover. "Also do you think witches are the only people that still have paper maps?"

Alaric chuckled at that, the thought having occurred to him a few times as well. "Well fortunately you can print Google Maps. It just takes a lot of paper. And ink," The ink was the expensive part of that, making him wince for a moment at how much they'd used before shrugging it off.

"I guess that's true," Hope replied, having not thought of that. She hadn't ever really thought about where Freya had gotten the very large maps she used before, she had a feeling they were custom made though.

"This is going to take forever to actually set up." That was the downside of the method she had used, as it was no longer a single solid spell but now dozens chained together she needed to do each segment separately. She could create the base arrays easily enough but the perimeter they were bound to would need to be drawn out for each component.

"Not as long as you might think, at least once I recruit the other witches to help," Dr. Saltzman said, getting Hope to look over at him in mild surprise. "You didn't really think I'd have you do this much work by yourself, did you?"

"I'm more surprised that you think they'll be able too, the spell is pretty complex," Hope pointed out, not having that high an opinion of most of her fellow witches. Alyssa Chang might actually be the best among them but the chances she would willingly help were below zero. She supposed some of the upperclassman might be able to help but she wouldn't recognize any of them if they burst through the door at this moment.

"They're better you seem to think, if we gave them the arrays they could recreate them at the least," Alaric replied, refraining from rolling his eyes at her low opinion of the school's witches. While the other witches her age might not be able to help the senior witches certainly could, the spell was complex but not that complex.

Then again he didn't actually intend to give them the arrays to let them try. While he had been fine with letting them try to create a vampire detection spell it was quite another thing to hand one out to them. But there were still other ways they could help. "That wasn't what I was planning on doing anyways though. It's better if you work with Emma and create the arrays we need, and then I can have the witches help set up the perimeters around town."

That would cut the work down drastically Hope had to admit, as a couple of dozen witches could certainly do the work faster than she could alone. But that would only work if they actually did it right. "Are you sure they can manage it?"

Alaric's head dropped slightly, giving Hope a light glare. "It's basically just walking in a circle," Alaric said, voice flat at how low Hope's opinion was of the witches. "They can manage."

"I don't know..." Hope mused sarcastically, before giving in and laughing. Ok fine, they could probably manage to walk in a circle to set the perimeter.

Alaric just shook his head, a slight smile on his face as Hope laughed. He'd give Bonnie a call later and have her look over the spell too, just to make sure he hadn't missed anything but everything looked to be in order. Then once Caroline was back they could test it out to make sure everything worked before actually getting to work setting it up. "Should make Donovan happy at least, he's been hounding me for updates."

Before Hope could say anything the door to the office opened, Caroline blurring into the room before coming to a sudden halt upon seeing Hope. "Hope? What are you in here for?... Oh god, don't tell me he did decided to host another fight between you and the werewolves."

Hope laughed a little at that as Alaric just shook his head, "That was one time. And it worked."

"Uh huh," Caroline mused, looking between the two suspiciously. She still wasn't happy that Hope had fought with Javier last year, even if the results had turned out alright.

"It's fine. Jed's taking over as alpha and he knows to leave me alone," Hope said, not concerned about it. Besides the idiot from earlier that day the wolves had kept their distance, like she wanted.

"Oh, well, that's good then," Caroline replied, sharing a look with Alaric who only shrugged in response. Neither of them liked how much Hope had isolated herself from the rest of the students but it wasn't like they could force her to make friends.

"Well I think I'm done here anyways," Hope said, knowing that Caroline hadn't vamped into the office expecting to find her there. "Let me know when you want me to start working on the arrays."

"I will," Alaric said, giving Hope a nod as she left office. Turning his attention towards Caroline he wondered what had brought her back to Mystic Falls so suddenly. Last he had talked to her she wasn't planning on being back until the week before the twins birthday, which was still over a month away.

"So, care to explain how Hope ended up having to kill a vampire to save you?" Caroline asked after making sure the door to the office was shut. It wouldn't do to have the rest of the school hearing what she was certain was about to be another argument between it's two headmasters.

"How did you even hear about that?" Alaric asked, moving to behind the desk and pulling out a bottle of scotch. Pouring two glasses he offered one to Caroline, the vampire glaring at it for a moment before giving in and downing it.

"Bonnie called me, asking if I had run across any vampire detection spells while researching the Gemini curse. I asked why, she said that Donovan had asked her to create one after a close call. Then I call him to check up and find out that I would've needed to break out my best black dress for your funeral if not for Hope," Caroline said, her voice getting colder as she went on. She was the vampire, Alaric was the human, he was the one that was supposed to stay safe at home and make sure their girls would never be in danger of losing both their parents while she searched for ways to protect them.

Alaric just sighed, before pouring himself another drink. He had been hoping that Caroline wouldn't find out about that, and only partly because Hope had been involved. It wasn't like he didn't take precautions, a powerful protection spell courtesy of Bonnie being just one of them. "So, do you want to fight over something that's already happened and we did the best we could with? Or would you like to see what I'm doing to make sure it doesn't happen again?"

* * *

Sitting on one of the benches near the lake Hope finished shading in the last of the treeline she was working on, using magic to shift the color of her pencil to whatever she needed as she drew. It was a bit of a cheat but it made it far easier to do spontaneous full color work when she only needed a single pencil. And getting the colors right on the actual lake with the sun reflecting off of it was going to be hard enough as it was.

Looking up to the lake she raised her pencil in front of her, eyeing it before using a spell to shift the color to what she was seeing. Glancing between them she nodded in satisfaction, lowering her head to draw when a flash of motion out out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. Looking up she was mildly surprised to see that someone else had come out to the lakeside this afternoon, Hope recognizing the girl as the new witch that had been hanging around Josie and Lizzie lately.

Curious she watched the girl for a moment, trying in vain to remember her name. She was fairly sure it started with a P... so Penelope maybe? Or Paige? Hope's nose scrunched up at that, it didn't sound right at all. It was probably Penelope, there weren't a lot of names that started with a P. Surprised at the path her thoughts had gone down Hope shook her head to clear it, turning her attention back to the girl.

Penelope walked out to the end of the pier before raising her hands and calling out a spell, the water from the lake rising up to condense in a ball, swirling around as it compacted before suddenly collapsing. Even from as far away as she was Hope could make out the frown on Penelope's face as the spell failed, before she tried again. Straining her hearing Hope could just make out the incantation, _inlecebra aquatigue_ , as Penelope attempted it once more.

Recognizing the spell Hope nodded to herself, turning her attention back to her drawing pad. She had been curious what the witch had come out here to do but the spell was little more than a training spell, designed to teach young witches how to control something that was quite literally as fluid as possible. It had been a pain in the ass back when she had learned it, but then again she had been nine at the time.

Try as she might Hope couldn't help but glance over to Penelope as she kept practicing the spell. She had assumed that she'd only try a couple of times before calling it a day and leaving but Penelope had been at it for twenty minutes now. Hearing Penelope curse as she lost control of the spell again Hope smiled slightly before shaking her head as she tried to focus on her art once more. Looking down though she realized that she had barely added anything since Penelope had come out to the lake.

Sighing Hope closed up her sketchbook, deciding that she wasn't going to getting anything more done today with the distractions. Standing up to leave she looked Penelope's way once more, laughing slightly as she saw the girl slam her foot down in frustration at the spell coming apart once more. Her brow furrowed in concern though as she saw her stumble slightly at the action though, causing Hope to debate what she should do internally before giving in and walking down to the pier.

It didn't take her long to reach the pier, by which time Penelope had drawn in another sphere of water that she was struggling to contain. Shaking her head Hope raised one hand, whispering a spell as she overrode Penelope's control, drawing the water and the girl's attention over to her. "I think that's enough for today."

Penelope just blinked in surprise, not having expected anyone to be watching her, much less the infamous Hope. She couldn't remember seeing the girl approach anyone in the short time she had been at the school and now she was just standing on the pier, an annoyingly perfect sphere of water spinning above her fingertips. "Oh come on, how is that so easy for you?"

Hope smiled at that, a genuine one that reached her eyes, before it shifted to a grin. Splitting her fingers out she broke the sphere apart into four smaller ones, each controlled by one of her fingers as she made them interweave in the space above her hand. "Practice, a lot of it," Hope answered, before flicking her wrist and sending the water back into the lake. "I think you've done enough for today though."

"No I haven't. I still can't do this stupid spell right," Penelope retorted. Pushing a strand of hair that had fallen in front of her eyes back she noticed for the first time how damp it was, not having realized that she had actually started sweating while practicing.

"You're clearly exhausted, continuing would actually be dangerous," Hope pointed out, trying to keep from rolling her eyes.

"Dangerous how?" Penelope asked, tilting her head slightly. It was just a basic spell, one every other witch here had mastered already.

"Why do you think you're sweating so much?" Hope asked, Penelope looking down at herself reflexively. "Even with earth magic there's a cost to using it. It takes energy, less than with other forms of magic sure, but energy all the same. And overdrawing yourself can lead to some nasty side effects.

"Seriously? And why didn't anyone tell me that?" Penelope asked, not doubting what Hope was saying but rather pissed that no one had warned her.

"Probably thought you knew. Or didn't think anyone would try enough for it to matter," Hope guessed. "The only reason it's even a problem is because you did so many spells back-to-back, if you had rested more in between it wouldn't have been a problem."

Penelope's face showed visible confusion as she took that all in, trying to work out how she had messed up. The little bit of magic she'd learned already had come from her dad's books and she'd picked those spells up quickly enough. But as she had learned after coming here those had all been rather simple spells, and she was rather behind what her fellow witches could do. Thus why she had been pushing herself so hard.

"Think of it like doing push-ups, if you had to do twenty every hour you'd be fine. But if I made you do two hundred all at once you'd end up collapsing. Same principle with magic," Hope added, thinking of the simplest way to explain as she noticed Penelope's confusion. It wasn't a perfect analogy, in part because the cost of overdrawing their magic could have very severe side effects, but it made sense.

"I'd probably collapse after the twenty," Penelope admitted, her face twisting in displeasure at the idea. What Hope said made sense though, of course actual magic wouldn't be as easy as just saying some words in the right order. This wasn't Harry Potter. "What about you, how much would it take for you to collapse?"

"Doing push-ups?" Hope asked, quirking an eyebrow at the question. Because she was fairly sure she could go all day and into the night if she really wanted to. Werewolf strength and stamina plus vampiric regeneration meant she didn't really suffer the effects that anyone else would.

"No... ok, actually I am curious about that too but we can leave it for later," Penelope replied, needing a minute to think about it. Hope was part werewolf right? So she had to be fit. But then again she didn't look as if she'd be able to do even a single push-up correctly. "I meant magic, how long would you need to use the same spell I was before it was an issue?"

"Why does it matter?" Hope asked guardedly, not seeing the point. She had only come here to keep the new girl from giving herself an aneurysm, not to play twenty questions.

"I'm curious. You don't seem any different than any other witch here but the way everyone talks..." Penelope said, finishing with a shrug. "I guess I want to see how I stack up."

Hope gave a dry little laugh at that, shaking her head slightly. "Trust me, I'm the last person you want to compare yourself to. Go ask the twins instead, you're friends with them."

"They siphon other people's magic, they're only as strong as whoever they siphon from," Penelope pointed out, repeating what she'd learned from Josie. And even with that handicap they both had so much more control than she did that it was honestly a little depressing to compare herself to them.

"That's not quite accurate..." Hope said, tilting her head slightly as she regarded Penelope. It was true that the twins needed to siphon magic to power their spells but they were also designed to channel magic. If they did it right they could channel even the most powerful magics in the world, magics that would kill most other witches. As they had shown when removing the Hollow from her.

"Come on, what's the harm?" Penelope pushed, now mostly just wanting Hope to do so because she was being obstinate about it.

"You do realize that you're missing the whole point of the spell, right?" Hope said instead, the confused look Penelope gave her answering her question. "Right, of course not. The point isn't to see how much water you can draw in, but how much control you can exert over it. Draw in less and then work on changing it's shape into something more complicated."

When she had first learned it that was what she had done. Of course there were a few differences between them, the first being that she was nine when she started learning it. And the second being that she had levitated a swimming pool's worth of water when she had first tried. It had taken her a week to learn to limit her magic enough to draw in a small enough amount to start practicing the spell the way you were supposed to.

Sighing Penelope blew a strand of hair up out of her face, "I guess learning magic isn't as easy as I thought it would be."

"Whoever said it was easy?" Hope asked, smiling as Penelope just shrugged. The downcast look the girl had actually made her sympathetic to her, which was why she ended up tearing a page out of her sketch pad and writing down a few things for her. "Here, take this. It's a list of some of the books I read when I was first learning magic. They'll help you learn the theory behind it, along with some basic practice spells."

"Uh, thanks..." Penelope said awkwardly, taking the list from Hope. Glancing down she was surprised at how much was there, Hope had even marked which ones were for theory and which for practical work. "Does everyone here read these?"

"Does everyone ever read all that the teacher assigns?" Hope pointed out rhetorically, even when given literal magic spell-books teens still whined about having to read. "Some of them are required reading for the beginner classes, the rest are the ones I found most useful. Your choice what you do with them."

"Right..." Penelope said, looking down at the list again. Glancing back up she was surprised to see that Hope had turned and started to walk away, apparently having decided that she was done talking. "Hey, Hope!"

"What?" Hope answered slowly, stopping and turning to look back at her.

"If I have any more questions, can I come to you?" Penelope asked, hoping she would say yes. Hope had been the first person that was actually willing to explain to her how any of this magic stuff worked. Everyone else seemed to just expect her to know it already.

Hope looked at her in suspicion for a moment before shaking it off, "Sure, but I can't promise I'll be able to help." She had only helped today because she felt like it. And maybe part of her was impressed that Penelope had been willing to push herself so hard. Giving the girl a slight nod and small smile she turned and headed back to the school, doubting the girl would actually come up to her again anyways.

* * *

Stumbling as she exited the circle Caroline held one hand to her head, still wincing at how it was pounding. "Well it definitely works," she said through gritted teeth, her head still pounding. It had felt like her head was being split in two while inside the circle, not quite to the level of the worst pain infliction spells but enough that she hadn't wanted to spend any longer inside than she had too. And it was still throbbing now.

"Told you it would," Hope commented, a smug look on her face. Caroline had insisted on testing it out, despite her assurance. "Should be more than enough to let any vampire know that they're not welcome." It was only a secondary function but it was an important one. The idea was that the headache would be enough to let vampires know that the town was off-limits to them. Hopefully even the dumbest vampires would be able to take the hint.

"The tags work as well," Alaric said from where he was watching, a handful of small metal tags in front of him. The largest of them was glowing a bright red, while another smaller tag glowed red as well. The idea was simple, the large tag told him the perimeter had been activated, the smaller one told him which segment it had been. It couldn't tell them if the vampire had crossed or taken the warning and left but there were others ways to tell that, as long as they actually knew that they needed to do so.

"Should probably add a sound to the main tag as well," Hope said, the idea coming to her now. It glowed pretty brightly but that wouldn't be enough to wake someone. Should be simple enough, and it would be fun to see just how annoying of an alarm she could create.

Alaric winced at that, already dreading being awoken at three in the morning by it. But it was a good idea. "Right, should make a few more main tags, so that we have spares. And I guess we should give one to Donovan as well," Alaric said, thinking out loud. It would be a gesture of goodwill to the Sheriff and that was never a bad thing.

"Sure, that's easy enough," Hope said, before looking over to where the circle had been set. Focusing she lifted one hand, pulling the metal rods they'd stuck into the ground up with it. That had been an improvement to her original design they'd made in the last week, thanks to an insight from Bonnie. Instead of using something like chalk or blood to draw the circles they'd tethered each onto a series of metal rods that could be driven into the ground instead. Each rod was only a foot or so long, and there were seven to each circle, six to create the perimeter, one at the center. Well they weren't really circles anymore but the principle was still the same.

"How many of these are we making again?" Hope asked, pulling the rods into a bundle and tying them together. She had made this set, and she knew some of the older students were helping make more, but they needed a lot.

"Too many," Alaric said, shaking his head slightly. The rods were a good idea, far less detectable and easier to set up but also far more costly. Fortunately Caroline had taken care of persuading the mayor to purchase the materials needed for them. After all it was for the good of Mystic Falls, it was only right that they chip in. "But they should be finished in a few days time."

"And how are we coming on adding a loophole for our students?" Caroline asked, finally rejoining the conversation as her headache faded. She hadn't been expecting the headache to linger like that, but at least it confirmed that any vamp that intentionally crossed the boundary couldn't say they weren't warned.

"Already done. Care to try it out?" Hope asked, pulling a ring out of her pocket and tossing it over to Caroline.

"Is this one of mine?" Caroline asked, eyeing the ring curiously. She vaguely remembered it, but if it was it wasn't one she had worn in awhile.

"The fact that you have so many you can't tell is a problem," Alaric chimed in, shaking his head. If it had only been Caroline that had a taste for extravagance that would've been one thing, but unfortunately she passed it down onto their daughters as well.

"Bite me," Caroline retorted, sliding the ring onto one finger. As she did Hope motioned with her hand, lifting the rods back into the air, before driving them into the ground with a flick of her wrist. Taking a deep breath as Hope activated the barrier once more Caroline steeled herself, before speeding into the center of it.

"Didn't trust me?" Hope asked, an amused expression on her face as Caroline sighed in relief from the center of the circle.

"Of course I did," Caroline dismissed, not having meant for it to be so apparent how nervous she had been. The first time had been quite painful though, so she hadn't been looking to repeat it.

"Of course," Hope replied, a slight smile on her face. "Anyways, it can be tied into a daylight ring without causing any problems. As I already did with that one."

"I'd suggest waiting until we're inside to take off your current ring," Alaric said, Caroline stopping and looking up from the much gaudier daylight right she wore. "Don't want to have to explain to our daughters that you incinerated yourself swapping your jewelry."

Caroline started to retort back before Hope cut her off, "We're done here then? Good." Hope said shortly, her tone far less playful than it had just been. Avoiding making eye contact with either of them she turned and walked off, heading into the school.

Alaric and Caroline just looked at each other for a moment, wondering what that had been about before realization dawned on them. "Ah, fuck," Alaric groaned, smacking himself in the forehead. Hayley, of course. Hell, the year anniversary of her death wasn't that far off now. How had they forgotten that?

"Nice one," Caroline said, shaking her head. Alaric had a point about waiting until she was indoors to test the new ring, as it was obviously better to be cautious with something that could kill her in an instant. But there was this thing known as tact and his had clearly been lacking.

"Come on," Alaric said, giving Caroline a look, "You didn't realize it either." Neither of them had, that was the problem. It was all too easy to forget what Hope had gone through at times, and that it hadn't been quite a year since she had lost both of her parents.

"Perhaps, but I'm not the one that stuck their foot in their mouth," Caroline replied, smirking at Alaric. Looking around she realized something else they had missed. "For that, you can be the one to dig the spikes up."

Alaric just looked at her before his gaze flickered to the ground, where the seven spikes for the boundary spell where embedded. "You can't be seri-" He started to say, before Caroline simply left, disappearing in a blur of vampiric speed. Sighing he just shook his head, before walking off to go get shovel. Perhaps he'd get lucky and Hope hadn't sent them too far into the ground. He kind of doubted it though.

* * *

Walking down the stairs into the main assembly hall Penelope looked around, hoping to see Josie somewhere. Pouting when she didn't see her among the group of witches she looked for Lizzie instead, as the blonde was still better company that no one, even if they didn't click like her and Josie did. She was nowhere to be found either though, but she did spot one witch sitting off by herself.

"Mind if I sit here?" Penelope asked as she approached Hope, having to fight the instinct to step back as Hope looked up from her book with a glare. The look faded after a second though, Hope giving her a slight smile.

"Might as well, not like anyone else will," Hope said, not caring too much either way.

"Thanks," Penelope said, sitting down beside the girl. They had only talked once since that day on the pier, and that had mostly been her thanking Hope after having made progress on the spell. "So, any idea what this is all about?

It was the first time there had been an assembly like this since she had started, and as it seemed to be only witches so far she couldn't help but be curious. "Yes," Hope answered shortly, having been the one that created the spell that was the reason they were all here.

Penelope just looked at Hope, waiting for her to expound before realizing she had no intention to. "You going to clue me in?" She asked, wanting to know both why they were here and why Hope seemed to know already.

"Hmm... nope," Hope said, smirking slightly as she saw Penelope pout. It was fun teasing others, and she had been asked that she not let anyone know that she was the one that had created the spell. Honestly she didn't see why it mattered, but it wasn't like she had anyone to go around telling to start with.

"What? Why not?" Penelope asked, honestly not having been expecting Hope not to tell her. If you knew a secret then you were supposed to tell people, that's how it usually worked.

"Because..." Hope started before narrowing her eyes and glaring at someone behind Penelope, "Oh, great."

"Wow, was every other seat taken?" Lizzie said as she walked over to them, Josie at her side.

"Yes well, everyone else was trying not to leave any room for you," Hope retorted, rolling her eyes at the blonde. Did she have to try and start with her the moment she walked in?

"Guys, can you at least try and get along?" Josie asked, honestly fed up with the snark. She knew why Lizzie was always going at Hope but Hope didn't help things by always rising to her taunts. And then she got dragged in as well and everything got worse. "At least until we get our assignment and can leave?"

"Assignment?" Penelope asked, patting the seat next to her for Josie to take. She should've known the headmasters daughters would know what was going on as well.

"Apparently they want all the witches to help with setting up a new boundary spell around town," Lizzie said, taking the seat next to Josie and putting her feet up on the back of the seat in front of her. "Didn't think they were going to have literally every witch help out though."

"See would that have been so hard to tell me?" Penelope asked, turning to glare playfully at Hope.

Hope just rolled her eyes and huffed at that, ignoring the witches. Narrowing her eyes, Josie wondered how Hope had already known about the spell, having just found out from their parents themselves. "Wait, we only know because our Mom wanted to make sure we'd be okay paired up with another witch to siphon from. So how did you know?"

Hope just shook her head slightly, not intending to answer. Then Lizzie chimed in, "Ugh, Dad probably told her after she concussed him in one of their dumb training sessions. Because she gets special priv-"

"Actually it's because I'm the one who made the spell," Hope said sharply, cutting off Lizzie before she could really get started. She'd heard it all before after all. That she got special treatment, a special room, special lessons. How unfair it all was. Like she hadn't earned everything she'd received.

All three witches stopped and turned to look at her at that, more than a little surprised. They could all cast magic to varying degrees of course, and Josie and Lizzie were quite advanced for their age. But Hope had said she had made the spell. As in created an entirely new spell that their parents had decided was important enough to enlist the entire school's witch population to help set up.

"What?" Hope said hesitantly, her cheeks tinged red as she squirmed under the sudden scrutiny. It wasn't that big of a deal was it? Maybe this was why Dr. Saltzman hadn't wanted her to tell anyone.

"You made-" Penelope started before hearing Caroline calling for everyone's attention. Shifting in her seat she turned her attention to the front, although she couldn't help but look over at Hope once more. Just how much did the girl know about magic if she was able to create her own spells?

"Thank you," Caroline said as she saw the gathered witches focusing on her. "Now I'm sure all of you are curious as to why we've assembled you here. Well the Salvatore School is taking on a little project at the behest of Mystic Falls and we need everyone here's cooperation. We have been asked to..."

Shaking her head as Caroline continued, Hope wondered why she was even bothering with such a story. Sure Donovan had asked if it was possible to create a new boundary to keep vampires out but that was a far cry from Caroline was insinuating. And yes the Mayor had purchased the needed supplies for the spell, but that was the result of being compelled, not because he had any actual knowledge of what was going on. Barely paying attention to the speech now she almost missed hearing Caroline say they'd be paired up for the project. Well that was annoying, but with any luck they'd just let her work alone since she was the one that created the spell. That would be better for everyone.

* * *

Every now and then Hope would forget that her luck sucked. And then the universe would do something to remind her of it. Such as sticking her with Lizzie as her partner for setting up the boundary spell. "Could you at least try and keep up?" Hope complained, turning and glaring at Lizzie who was lagging behind her.

"Not everyone is part furry, Hope. Slow down," Lizzie snapped back, Hope's mouth dropping at that insult.

"I dare you to call one of the wolves a furry," Hope replied, glaring back at Lizzie. Still she stopped to let her catch up, her foot tapping the ground in annoyance the entire time. She just didn't see why she needed to have a partner anyways, it wasn't like she needed Lizzie to help with the spell. She was pretty much just babysitting.

The teachers were handling setting up the boundary near the more populated areas of the town while the students were responsible for setting it up around the school's grounds and out in the more secluded parts around town. All they needed to do was drive in the rods in the right place and then charge them with magic, so it had been made simple enough for even the younger witches to help.

"Whatever, I don't even see why I need to be here. Can't you handle this yourself?" Lizzie complained, honestly not seeing the point. This was probably her Mom's attempt to try to make her and Hope work together and get along.

"My thoughts exactly," Hope agreed, rolling her eyes as Lizzie finally caught up to her. "Here, give me your bag."

"Why?" Lizzie asked, clutching the bag with the metal rods in them tighter out of reflex. They were supposed to set up six of the circles for the boundary, with the rods divided into two bags for each of them to carry.

"Because I have super strength, while you have been literally dragging it behind you. It'll be faster if I just carry it," Hope pointed out, a little surprised Lizzie hadn't just given it to her immediately.

"Fine, but you better not go telling my parents I was slacking," Lizzie said, handing the bag over to Hope. It wasn't that heavy, maybe twenty pounds, but it wasn't like she was strong either.

"I don't care about you enough to bother doing that," Hope retorted, Lizzie glaring at her in response. Not bothering to wait for a response, Hope turned and headed to where they were supposed to set up the first circle, this time not bothering to slow down despite Lizzie's shouts to.

If they weren't going to let her work alone then couldn't they have paired her up with one of the witches that would've been too afraid to talk with her? Or even with Josie, they could at least get along when they needed to. The only way this could have been more annoying was if she'd gotten stuck with Alyssa but it'd been Penelope that ended up being the one to fall on that grenade.

Reaching the area for the first circle she pulled out the necessary rods, charging the center rod and burying it into the ground with a quick spell. Seeing Lizzie finally reaching her she separated out three rods, holding them out for her to take. "Here, take care of setting these up, I'll handle the rest."

Lizzie just glared at Hope, before reaching out and taking the rods, "Fine. Sooner we're done, sooner I'm rid of you." Grabbing Hope's arm by the wrist she siphoned from it, practically throwing it down after a few seconds.

"You could've asked," Hope said, shaking her head as Lizzie stomped away from her. Whatever, it hadn't been like she was going to tell her no, she had more than enough magic to spare. Sighing she turned and got to work, Lizzie was right, the sooner they finished this the sooner they'd be free of each other.

It didn't take her long to finish up, the circle they were setting was fairly long but not that wide so they were fairly close together. Walking back to the center spike she wasn't too surprised to see Lizzie already waiting for her. "What took you so long?" Lizzie asked, her foot tapping the ground in impatience.

"Remember how the circles need to overlap? I went ahead and set up the start of the next one. So quit whining and get moving so we can finish," Hope explained, turning on her heel and heading for the next area.

"You couldn't have just told me you were going to do that? Then I wouldn't have been waiting back here," Lizzie said, glaring at Hope's back as she walked ahead of her. Was it really that hard for her to even try and cooperate? Not getting an answer in response she just shook her head, "Why are we doing this anyway? Mom didn't really explain."

That was true Hope admitted. For as much as Caroline had talked about what they were doing she had left out several details as to why they were doing so. "It's a boundary spell to warn if any vampires enter the town without permission."

"Why do we need that?" Lizzie asked, genuinely curious why they were bothering. It wasn't like vampires hadn't been living in Mystic Falls for years, her Mom being a great example.

"Because vampires get hungry, and when they're hungry and in some out of the way town they tend to not care if they kill their food," Hope explained, being more familiar with it than she would like. She loved her family but she was well aware of their history, and they had been far less restrained in their feeding habits before she had come along.

"So we're doing all of this on the off chance some rando might get eaten? Wow, talk about an overreaction," Lizzie said dismissively. Who cared if some random hobo got eaten, even Mystic Falls had enough they could afford to lose a few.

"I'll remember that next time your Dad is about to be eaten," Hope muttered under her breath without really meaning too. Hearing Lizzie stop behind her she realized she must have said it loud enough for her to hear, getting her to stop and turn back to her. "Lizzie, I didn't mea-"

"Shut up," Lizzie said, glaring at Hope. Her Dad had nearly been eaten? When, why? Was that why her Mom had suddenly come home early? Was that why Dad had been spending more time with them? Why had Hope been there? Dozens of questions raced through her mind at once, overwhelming her. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

"Lizzie," Hope said softly, letting the bags holding the supplies for the circle fall to the ground as she slowly approached the girl. She wasn't sure what was going on but Lizzie looked to be in pain, the blonde holding her head as she crouched down. Stepping to her slowly she reached out and took Lizzie's hand, hoping to be able to calm her down.

"Go away!" Lizzie shouted, subconsciously siphoning from Hope as she pushed her away. With the magic she pulled from Hope running through her though she didn't just do so physically but with a telekinetic blast that sent the tribrid flying across the woods and into a tree. Shocked Lizzie looked up, her eyes widening as she saw what she had down.

It hadn't been just Hope she'd sent flying, but the rods they were supposed to be setting as well. They had been blasted out as if from a shotgun, burying themselves into the nearby trees. Including the one she'd just flung Hope into, the girl being impaled by at least three of them that went through her stomach, blood dying them and Hope as it ran down from the wounds.

"No, no, no, no no no..." Lizzie said, just repeating it endlessly as she collapsed to the ground. She hadn't meant to. It wasn't her fault. What had she done. Hope. Hope was. What had she done.

All around her magic swirled in the air as Lizzie's mental state deteriorated even more, the shock of what she had done setting in. Leaves flew into the air all around her, the trees starting to vibrate as more magic poured out of her as she lost control. " _Ad somnum_ _,_ "and like that everything fell silent once more, Lizzie falling to the ground unconscious, the only sound being the pained breaths of Hope as she tried to stay conscious, the effort of having cast even that simple spell being draining for her.

* * *

"-you possibly think this was ok?" Caroline asked, glaring down at Alyssa. They had paired her with Penelope because she was new and one of the few witches that Alyssa hadn't already had a history of problems with. And now the poor girl had two busted eardrums that would've taken weeks to heal if not for her giving Penelope some of her blood.

"It was an accident!" Alyssa defended, not that she expected anyone to believe her. It was though, they had been arguing, then yelling, and then it just happened. It wasn't her fault.

"An accident? Like when you turned my daughters purple? Or stabbed Jake with a pencil?" Caroline asked, exasperation evident in her voice. She tried to be understanding whenever she could, and she knew that there were actual reasons for the girl being unstable, but her behavior kept getting worse. If this kept up... "Detention, for the next month."

"What?! But she's fine now. How is that fair?" Alyssa protested, sinking into the seat of the bus. She had just gotten out of her last detention a few days ago, and now she was stuck with another month's worth. It'd be nearly winter break by the time she was done with it.

"It's fair because you-" Caroline started before coming to a sudden halt. She could smell something that was all to familiar to her. Blood, a lot of it, freshly spilled. And there was something familiar about the way it smelled.

"Any more argument and it'll be two months," Caroline finished quickly, shutting Alyssa down as she stepped away from her. Exiting the bus she focused her senses, her eyes going wide in alarm as she realized why it had smelt familiar. Because it belonged to Hope. Not even bothering to let Alaric know what was going on she took off at full speed, heading to where Lizzie and Hope had been. Even as she ran a knot of dread weighed her down, the fear that she would be too late, that Hope or Lizzie would be seriously hurt. And the concern for what could have even happened in the first place.

* * *

The pain Hope felt was almost blinding. Not only had she been pierced through in multiple places but those same rods were now keeping her suspended against the tree, while her body weight and gravity tried to drag her down. And more worryingly they were keeping her from healing. Biting down on her lip hard enough to draw blood Hope forced herself to move, placing her hands and feet against the thick oak tree she'd been pinned to before pushing herself off of it.

It hurt even more to do so, feeling the wounds tear as what had already started to heal around the rods was torn apart once more. But she wasn't about to die because a teenager had lost her temper. With one last push she pushed herself off the rods, crying out as they cut a jagged line up her back as she fell from them.

Landing on the ground she just lay there, groaning softly as her body knit itself back together. Reaching slowly she felt around the wounds with one hand, trying to tell where she'd actually been pierced. One just under her belly button, another through her left side, and the last about two inches above that. She wasn't an expert on anatomy but she was pretty sure one of those had gone through her kidney. Or maybe her liver. Whichever was over there.

Groaning once more Hope pushed herself up to her feet, the wounds close to fully healed already. "You got lucky," she said softly, looking over to where Lizzie lay. Any of the other witches would've been dead had they suffered the injuries she had. Although maybe she wouldn't have gone off like that if she'd been with someone else. "Hope!"

Turning Hope saw Caroline speeding into the clearing, not even that surprised. With as much blood as had spilled out of her any vampire in five miles could've smelled it. Caroline just stared at her, before realizing that Lizzie was laying unconscious on the ground. Rushing to her she pulled her daughter to her, before turning and glaring at Hope. "What did you do?" She growled out, her concern as a mother overriding her sense for a moment.

Rolling her eyes Hope just shook her head, "I got impaled to a tree by your crazy daughter. You know I didn't really believe all the rumors going around but they're true aren't they? She's actually crazy."

"She's not-... she can't control her brain chemistry," Caroline defended, shifting Lizzie to get a better look at her. There wasn't a mark on her so best guess was Hope had used a sleeping spell to knock her out. Once she woke up though... there was no way this would be good for her.

"Her brain- I had literal voices in my head telling me to kill everyone! And I was able to keep it under control!" Hope shouted back, honestly just needing an outlet for her anger. She believed that Lizzie hadn't meant to hurt her but that didn't change the fact that she had, had nearly killed her. This wasn't something that could just be passed off as an accident.

"And how well did Klaus handle it?" Caroline snapped back, her eyes widening as she realized what she had said. Fuck, she hadn't meant that. "Hope I didn't mean-"

"Yes, you did," Hope said, cutting her off. Pushing it from her mind she focused on Lizzie, if she was really as fragile as she appeared then this was only going to make her worse. It was better if she never knew it had happened.

As Hope took a step towards her and Lizzie, Caroline reflexively pulled her daughter in tighter to her. "What are you intending to do?" Caroline asked, her concern for her daughter still outweighing everything else.

"Helping her, something you clearly haven't been able to do," Hope snapped back, growing tired of the mistrust Caroline was showing her. If she had wanted to hurt Lizzie then she would have, and there wasn't anything anyone could have done to stop her. But that wasn't her intention.

"How?" Caroline asked cautiously, praying that Hope actually had someway to do so.

"Remembering this is only going to make her worse. So I'm going to take that away," Hope said, kneeling down beside Lizzie. Pausing she waited for Caroline to agree, not wanting to have to knock the woman out as well.

"Removing a memory will just create a gap. One that she'll notice and try to figure out why it's there," Caroline said, being familiar with the process. Compulsion was easily a vampire's most useful ability but repeated use led to nasty side effects. And a sudden gap in memories would become readily apparent the instant they had a reason to suspect something was wrong.

"I know," Hope said, having learned as much from what Cami had written, both in the memoirs and her own diaries. That had led to Freya creating a new spell, one that could conceal a memory without leaving the blank space that removing it would. "This spell works differently. She'll remember losing control, lashing out, and falling unconscious, but nothing else. The rest will be distorted, like it was a dream."

"That's..." Caroline started before trailing off. It was as much as she could hope for, more than she had hoped for really. Lizzie would still remember losing control but not what she had done. She'd be able to see the need for continuing her therapy and to actually take her medication but not be scarred by almost killing Hope. "Do it."

Nodding Hope reached out for Lizzie, placing her hands on either side of her head. " _Occult_ _us somnium memoria_ ,"she cast softly, focusing on the spell. It was trickier then simply saying words but her vampire side helped with that, letting her easily slip into the girl's memories and change what she needed to.

"It's done. She won't remember what happened," Hope said, letting her hands fall away and leaning back for a moment.

"Thank you, Hope. I owe you immensely for this," Caroline said sincerely. Once she'd calmed down a little she had finally noticed the blood stained rods driven into the tree, as well as just how much blood drenched Hope. It was clear to her that if it had been anyone else then they would've been dead. Instead Hope was not only fine but had even been able to help her daughter.

"Just get her the help she needs. You don't need me to tell you how lucky she got," Hope said, rising to her feet. Looking down she couldn't help but wince at the blood covering her clothes. They were pretty much ruined, and that was before you counted the holes through her shirt and hoodie. It reminded her of the night that had been the reason for creating this damn boundary in the first place.

"We need to get you cleaned up. Then we can take both of you back to the school. Rick can finish up out here," Caroline said, her mind moving to how to keep anyone from finding out what had happened know that the immediate concerns had been resolved.

"I pretty sure I'm past cleaning up. Just take Lizzie back, I'm going to burn these clothes, shift, and then head back to the school," Hope said, already pulling her hoodie off. The only thing salvageable was her shoes but she wasn't particularly attached to them anyways so it wasn't real loss.

"Hope, are you sure you're okay?" Caroline asked finally, kicking herself for waiting so long to ask. Hope was the one that had actually been injured, it should've been the first thing she'd asked.

"Been through worse," Hope said, not exactly reassuring Caroline. "I'll be fine. A run in wolf form will help, let me clear my mind."

"Okay," Caroline said after a moment of hesitation. She did need to get Lizzie back to the bus, having her come too here would undo everything Hope had done for her. But she couldn't help but feel that she should be doing more for Hope. "If you need anything all you have to do is ask."

"Sure," Hope replied with a shrug, having no intention of doing so. Reaching out with her magic she pulled the many rods that had been thrown about to her, leaving them in a nice pile for Caroline to take back later. They did still need them to finish setting up the boundary spell after all but it wouldn't be her doing so.

Giving Hope one last look Caroline picked her daughter up, cradling her in her arms before rushing back to the bus. She had thought her daughter was doing better but clearly that wasn't the case. The irony that she'd been scolding Alyssa for what she had done when her own daughter had nearly killed another student wasn't lost on her either. It was clear that what they were doing wasn't enough, and that she needed to find someway to stop the Merge from ever taking place. Because as Lizzie currently was then simply finding out would be disastrous.

* * *

**Author's:** So I came up with the last scene with Lizzie first, and then had to work backwards to get to there. Plus I wanted to set up a few things for later chapters, mostly a foundation for Penelope and Hope. Funny thing the only time they ever speak to each other in the series is during the Mombie Dearest episode. And since so much time passes between here and the start of Legacies I can do pretty much whatever I want with them. Next chapters features Hope getting kidnapped, possibly for Christmas. You'll have to wait and see. Until then check out some of my other stories and leave me a comment letting me know what you think. I always like getting those and they help my writing quite a bit.


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